Into the Breach
by victor aeternum
Summary: The crew of the Semper Fidelis, warship of the rogue trader Lucius Dynasty, has been petition to assist marooned Imperial Guardsmen. But before the ship even arrive at their destination, the warp has something in store for its eclectic crew. This introductory short story sets the stage for the events after The Butcher's Bill.
1. Chapter 1

_**Into the Breach**_

Pilot Levi Toth waited patiently by his battered shuttle for his client. The lighter, an Argus pattern shuttle, had been in his family's possession for nearly 150 years. His grandfather had acquired it using a lifetime's worth of saving, old navy contacts, and the Emperor's blessing. Ever since, the lighter had taken three generations of his family's men where few had ever been. Beyond Fistae Munda's tempestuous atmosphere.

Barnabus, the lighter, was a cankerous old fart. Stuck in its ways and impervious to correction, but Levi knew how to handle it. Named after his grandfather and sharing quite a few similarities, the lighter was his pride and joy. Despite its homely appearance, Levi had put in extra effort to make him presentable, because today's client was someone special. An authentic outer stellar Rogue Trader, not one of those in-system charter captains that like to boast, but a living breathing scion from a thousand year old dynasty. The contract had come on a gilded scroll with the endorsement of an imperious seeming vice facto named Villaneuva and full payment upfront from a certified counting house, the _Laes Fortinito_ bank. Levi had looked it up, it was the capital city premiere treasury. What the scion of the Lucius dynasty might want with his old dingy was beyond him, but none of his business, every generously overpaid throne was reason enough.

So stock still, in his best body glove, he awaited his patron at landing zone 3H4R, grit blowing in his face from all the neighboring dust offs. Argus lighters were best used as cargo conveyors, stubby things for sure, but sturdy and dependable. Maybe the Rogue Trader wanted to haul up some baubles he had purchased, too precious to transport in his own ships for fear of a rival's treachery. Levi stopped a moment to ponder it uncomfortably, tongue rolling in his mouth. Perhaps this contract was not as much of a blessing as he had originally thought.

The day promised to be like no other, and the star port's habitual dealings only made the experience more surreal for it. Everywhere around him, cargo was being ferried to shuttles of all makes and sizes. His own made all the more puny beside the hundred thousand ton ships that blanketed the periphery landing zones with their shadows. Despite watching the giants defying the planet's gravity, and slowly rising up into the tumultuous skies, he felt every bit the giant. Today was going to be the best day of his long career.

Then his musing was interrupted.

"_Toth and Sons_,is that you?" asked a stranger in an old duster.

"What…" Blinked Levi "yes, that's me, I mean my charter. Who are you?"

The man nodded and whistled loudly at a group of shady men nearby, who then signaled a monstrous looking vehicle to come closer. The massive transport bucked, chortled to life and started to roll on over. It was covered in mismatched armor plates and garish looking paint.

"Alright kid, you were waiting for us, time to load up." Without waiting for an invitation the men walked over to the open cargo ramp and guided the spikey transport into the lighter.

"Kid? Excuse me! No, no no no, I'm waiting for an important client, a Rogue Trader, he's reserved this transport to go out world." Levi chased the man that had addressed him while trying to flag down the thugs. None of which paid him any attention.

"Did you hear me?" He creamed over the clanking machine which was waddling into his cargo bay with all the grace of a dreadnaught. "I'm not available for services!"

The stranger smirked and brushed his long coat open, harnesses and belts cinched tightly to his body and festooned with all manner of lethal implements. He reached into a pouched and flipped a small metal disk, which Levi barely caught before it could smack him in the face. It was a crest, of the Lucius Dynasty, the same that had decorated the gilded scroll. The pilot mouthed his confusion wordlessly and stumbled towards the envoy which was even now swaggering his way up to the cock pit.

Besides him, the monstrous contraption came to a stop, and the thugs started to secure it with loading straps and wheel chocks. They evidently knew what they were doing, even in the heavy gloom of the lighter's cargo section, moving with the confidence of void born deckhands.

Levi was beyond himself, this was not what he had expected. He searched about his modest cargo hold for something to make sense of this travesty, as if something would magically materialize and explain these happenings. From behind the armored slit of the driver's cab he spied the glare of a man, large bloodshot eyes peering out of the darkness, too big for anyone's good, yet intently focused on him. Disdain dripped venomously from them, and the beleaguered pilot immediately knew he wanted to see no more of the man inside the ramshackle contraption. Levi shuddered and sought comfort elsewhere only to notice for the first time the partially hidden armament the thugs bore under their weathered coats.

"This is bad, very bad." One of the thugs, scarred and blinded in one eye, winked at Levi mockingly and drew the attention of his fellows.

"What is it fly boy? See something you like?" he growled with a gravely voice. "No? Well then, maybe you'd like to have a go at knuckles then?" the thugs roared in laughter as they looked up at the drivers cab, its first step as high as most men are tall. A sudden boom echoed from the driver's side door, the entire structure rattling. Levi scampered off in a panic, to mocking jeers, this time accompanied by the resounding guffaw of the mysterious driver the thugs had named Knuckles.

"Alright, first thing's first" Levi said, his voice still shaky. "This is my ship, and you and your men will respect my authority aboard it."

The cramped confines of the cock pit left the long coat wearing stranger craning his neck to look at the pilot's flustered entrance, and subsequent attempt to sit himself down. The chartered pilot's hand were shaking as he buckled his grav harness. Levi glanced sideways to find the stranger, perhaps in his early 30s, waiting on him to continue.

"What?" Sputtered Levi.

"Well, when someone say's first things first, there's usually more… than just that one thing."

"Right, well… you will address me as captain. You will also go sit in the cargo area with the other passengers, and… and you will follow my exact instruction, in all things, until you disembark."

"Nope…" chuckled the stranger. "That's not going to happen kid," and reclined propping his leg up on the co-pilot's instruments.

"Good, and then…wait, what?" Levi blinked a few long moments. Never in his entire career had he been so disrespected. So dismissed. It was _his_ ship for Saint Sandra's sake "What do you mean nope, and stop calling me kid, I'm you're elder by at least a score."

"No, you're not, kid. And I don't take orders from you." The stranger's eyes hadn't left his coat, which he now inspected intently. Evidently, he had been shot at, and he was counting the holes with a disappointed sigh. He then finally met Levi's eyes and smiled so openly and honestly that the pilot was unsettled by it. The stranger had gone from affecting a mien of disinterest to that of warm fellowship in the blink of an eye. Surely the man was mad. Best to leave madmen alone, Levi reminded himself, after all you can't reason with a mad man. And chances were he had a ship full of armed, and very dangerous, mad men aboard.

The burnishes sky cape fell beneath them as the shuttled rose. The feisty thermals that made the conveyer guild so crucial to Fistae Munda seemed to hamper their progress only slightly. At least, to an untrained eye it would have seemed so, but neither man in the cock pit could accurately be described as such.

"What's this bucket of bolts worth anyway?"

Those irreverent words had been the first spoken since dust off and Levi's awkward attempt to assert his authority. The man still had his boots up on the ships instrument, which angered the powerless charter pilot increasingly.

"This ship, is worth more than you will ever have. And to me, it's priceless."

The stranger smirked, "nothing is priceless." Waiting patiently for a response.

With a frustrated grumble, Levi relented, it was obvious that the wretch of a man was intent on pursuing the conversation. His dark eyes had never left Levi's face. The man was a typical bully, the star port's cantinas were filled with his ilk and Levi knew it was best to just stay out of their way. It was wisdom he could hardly allow himself in the confines of the cockpit.

"It's been in my family for as long as I can remember, and flying has been in our blood. It's everything that makes me…me. I don't expect you to understand."

"You'd be surprised. Ever wanted to be something else?" asked the stranger, strangely interested in the subject.

"Than a pilot? No, my father told me stories of how the stars looked once you crossed the threshold. It's what he called it, the shield that holds the bosom of Fista Munda in place. Like a magical portal that leads to… more. I was hooked on flying before I could even walk."

The man snorted, "Romantic bluster, nothing more. It's precious how people wrap things up. All to make their miserable existence bearable, one dream at a time."

"Frak you!" Levi spat. His face was set, grim and hurt. Who was this man to spit on all that gave his life, that of his father, and his grandfather before him, its meaning.

"So you've a spine after all," the stranger laughed, and genuinely apologized before taking his dirty boots off the instruments.

It took a few moments of silence before Levi had fought the rising ire from his stomach. He glided along the gravity tides he was so familiar with, making a daunting flight look easy, weaving between the navigation points that made Fistae Munda's low orbit a graveyard for the inexperienced. Something happened a long time ago, when the imperium was young, which made this world's atmosphere one of the most inhospitable to traverse. A battle that shook the heavens and deployed Dark Age of technology weapons. Fistae Munda had never recovered, not really.

The stranger paid close attention to Levi's manoeuvers, honestly impressed with them. Something raw and genuine welled up from him. Whatever his failings, this man obviously knew the wonders of the void and still felt the wonder of them. He caught himself warming up to the bastard, much against his will. There was something about the man…

"You're not what I expected." Levi finally admitted.

"Thank you," the stranger said, offering a playful smirk.

"No I meant it. At first I was expecting you're noble born master. Pomp and circumstance at hand. Well groomed and dashing. That sort of thing. I was being naïve of course. Why would a distinguished man ever set foot on my shuttle? I should have guessed I'd be taxying his … well whatever you are."

"Lord Sigismund Lucius likes to keep people on their toes. Keep them guessing. Always do the unexpected. The Emperor favors the Bold, he often says. Keeps men like him alive in this business.

Levi was guiding his shuttle out of the worst of the gravity wells, checking his auspex for the location of his destination, the _Semper Fidelis_. Once he locked on to her location, he let old Baranus coast towards her. The stranger was still speaking about the Lucius dynasty with something approaching pride and, surprisingly, eloquence.

"So," Levi asked timidly, "what exactly are we carrying? All I saw was that junker."

The stranger's infectious smile, there it was again. "Knuckles' rig? No that's just to keep him happy. It's important to keep him happy, if you know what I mean."

"I can only imagine, that man seems… dangerous."

"What makes you think he's a man?" chuckled the stranger. He shook his head again. "You never told me what this bird is worth to you."

Levi's discomfort crawled back into his awareness. If this Knuckles character was not a man, then, what was he? What had he gotten himself into, he wonderer again. "It's priceless… I told you."

"It's time we cut to the chase mister Toth," the stranger's tone lost all warmth. "A bird like this is worth fifty thousand on a good day. Yours couldn't fetch more than thirty, I'm guessing. But you seem like the kind of pilot we need right now, your skills anyways. I can get you sixty for it and your services."

"Thousand?" blurted Levi incredulously.

"You're a bad negotiator mister Toth." The man chuckled.

"That's generous, and I'm grateful for you're interest, but I couldn't. I told you, it's a family heirloom."

"That's not what I want to hear, kid." The stranger propped his legs up again, much to Levi's discontent. "We have a few thousand clicks before docking with the _Semper Fidelis_, and you are going to regret not making a deal by the time we get there.

Levi turned to face the man with an icy stare. "Is that a threat?"

"Consider it friendly advice. By now, the proper authorities will have been alerted and the identity of our off world transporter known. You'll be considered guilty by association. The offer is now fifty thousand."

Levi was livid. He knew this had been too good to be true. Such a fat commission. Stupid, stupid man. He yanked at his control and started to turn the shuttle around. A loud, threatening click made him turn his head. The stranger had upholstered an ornate bolt pistol and laid it across his extended legs, muzzle aimed at Levi's chest. Sweat suddenly beaded across the pilot's brow. His mouth achingly parched.

"As I said, you're a very bad negotiator mister Toth. We relieved the high pontiff of his staff of office, you understand. Someone wanted it more than he did, and that person paid very well. Now, if you return to the surface you will be as good as dead, I hear they still hang people on your world. That's a bad way to go, trust me, I've seen it. You can either turn a tidy profit or you can die, you're call."

Levi swallowed painfully, his throat constricting. Bile slowly rising up and threatening to spill from his quivering lips. "You… you can't kill me. I'm the only pilot here."

"You have no idea," the stranger tapped his trigger finger along the side of the weapon.

"Evidently, mister Toth, you under estimate us. You're world's strange gravity wells and hellish thermals were a bit too tricky for me to pull off, but out here, I can easily land this piece of junk. Now don't make me go down to thirty thousand. I know you're worth more than that."

The rest of the flight was spent in silence. The thug had thankfully holstered his weapon, feeling confident in his victory. And why not, Levi was terrified. He could barely keep his hands from shaking as he set the lighter down in the warship's auxiliary hangars. The thugs unloaded the armor plated monstrosity as efficiently as they has loaded it. Knuckles, its driver, all snarls and growls, stepping out to inspect his baby. It was an ork. A massive, tusked, nauseatingly smelly ork. Levi stood at the top of his loading ramp, mouth agape, as the stranger slapped him on his back and chuckled.

"He's nicer than he looks." He offered.

Inside the hangar, dozens of voidsmen bustled about. Everywhere there was movement. Industrial servitors carried impossible loads across the gunmetal grey deck. Maintenance crew serviced other cargo shuttles. A tech-priests, inured to the dangers of radiation and void shock, inspected the outdated ablative shielding of Levi's shuttle and blurted binary disappointment as his personal servitors attended to its tired machine spirit. Levi had never seen such synchronicity and discipline in a work crew, even at the star port he had spent his life traveling to and from.

A lithe well dressed woman walked up to the bottom of the ramp. She wore a dress of such singular craftsmanship that it was impossible to tell whether she was an Imperial noble, a merchant guild diplomat, or a governor's mistress. An escort of smartly dressed armsmen at her side were led by a fiery haired woman in a chief bosum's uniform. Their ceremonial weapons looked more than just parade ready. Amidst them, an elderly gentleman parted from their ranks and came to take the stranger at levi's side's coat. He then replace it with an ornately decorated buccaneer long coat and a tricorn hat.

"I trust you're adventure went well Lord-Captain," offered the attending gentleman.

"As planned Hubert, thank you." The stranger straightened up and affected an air of authority and control. In a blink of an eye, the Lord-captain had gone from hired thug to master and commander.

"You're… You're him," stammered Levi, on the verge of fainting.

"Always do the unexpected mister Toth. Consequently, I apologize for the deception but it was quite necessary to our endeavor. I would, however, be remiss if I didn't win in the bargain. Hubert, please settle mister Toth in his quarters, midship if you please."

The old man raised a thick eyebrow in return. "midship sir? The junior officers will not be pleased." The steward looked Levi up and down, then to Sigismund again.

"He's deserved it Hubert. Besides, he pilots for us now."

"Very well sir," sighed the elder as he took the overwhelmed pilot by the arm and walked him away. The Lord-captain joined up with his entourage, who smartly saluted with the exception of his vice Factotum, and marched at a firm pace.

"You know very well that when you go about, doing what you do, in any way that pleases you, I am the one that has to balance the budget you leave in tatters." The vice factotum scribbled frustratedly on her data-slate.

"Yes Sola, I know. But you're so good with numbers, coming from a forge world and all. And so enticingly beautiful."

The vice factotum rolled her eyes as she began to tabulate expenses and unapproved hiring. "Thank you Sigs, but honestly, you have to stop doing this." Sola's autoquill flitted over her data slate. Numbers and contracts shifting and reprioritizing before they had left the hangar bay. As they walked into the cramped corridors linking the hangar to the ship's spine, Sigismund couldn't help but smile.

The innards of the _Semper Fidelis_ were not pretty, but they were functional. Fielded during the Angevine crusades and a thousand year old, she had fought and scrapped her way through a hostile Calaxis sector all the way into the hands of the Lucius dynasty. Then scrapped some more. Her non-standard pattern hull contained some of the finest, even if some techpriest might say heretical, technology available. Those would not have been the Adeptus Mechanicus who stoked her plasma core to life, or lovingly attended to her machine spirit. Some modules even dated from the dark age of technology itself. All purchased and recovered from countless worlds in the endless quest for profit and adventure that was a Rogue Traders life.

Crewmen hugged the wall as their captain walked the corridors on his way to the command deck. Their reaction turning from awe and loyalty to fidgety fear as they saw the chief bosum trailing behind. Woe any crew that crossed Ribbella the red. The chief bosum was uncompromising. Discipline was her lover and punishment her pleasure. Under her ministration, the crew was one to rival any segmentum Battlefleet in efficiency. She could whip drunken wastes of space into zealous ratings in the time it took to leave one port and arrive at another. Even the detachment of storm troopers, seconded to the warship for a hefty bribe, respected her even if they would never admit it.

Sola's administrative details continued unabated, and mostly fell on deaf ear, as Sigismund finally arrived to his destination. Before his footsteps could ring to and fro a young woman's voice shrieked across the deck.

"Captain on Deck!" every single officer rose from their station at attention, obeying the commander Evangeline Lucius, youngest of Sigismund's half siblings and, for all the old man's insistence, understudy. She was formal, disciplined, authoritative, and barely out of her teens. And though he care for her as any sibling, even a half sibling, could, he resented having her in the command chain and wholly under his responsibility.

"Thank you Eva, no need to stand on formality men, back to work." The deck resumed its busy buzzing as Sigismund climbed the steps to his command throne and was promptly assailed with Evangeline's watch report. He leaned in and whispered in her hear, to which she turned a fiery red and stormed off silently. No need to erode her command in front of the men, after all.

Sola's disapproving features was enough to curb the smile he was trying to hide. "She's a fine young woman Sigs, you shouldn't treat her like that. She is trying to learn and looks up to you." The graceful factotum stood beside the Captain's throne as he reinitialized the command scepter that would signal to the machine spirit the beginning of his watch. Then, he took in the sight of his mighty command deck.

By the standards of most ship, the deck was cramped and undecorated. Banks of cogitators lined every recess of its length, officers and slaved servitors bustling about their surfaces managing the massive amounts of data that traversed them. It had a low ceiling lined with auxiliary power cords and large pic slates that featured the synthesized reports he needed to command. To its fore, a titanic armored steel-cryss bay allowed a humbling sight of the many spires and macrocannon batteries that lined the spine of the ship. Death and destruction within eye sight always reminded him of how much he loved this ship. Fast, lean, powerful, she deserved her role as the sword of the Lucius dynasty. She had none of the _Son of Utramar_'s majestynor the stealth of _The Chariot_, she was not a stately cruiser nor a furtive cage. She was what had founded the Imperium, a warship through and through.

Sigismund snapped out of his reverie at Sola's insistence. "Yes, yes" he waved dismissively. "Do what you do and make it work. You know I trust you." vice factotum Villaneuva slinked off. She knew better then to expect Sigismund to care about the mundane details required to run an empire. He was not like his father, and many sworn to the dynasty feared the day he would come to reign over it.

He rested his arms on his throne and kicked up his feet irreverently onto his command lectern, years of habit placing his heels away from the runes that would send a general quarter alarm ringing across the ship. His comfort was impeded however, by a data slate left behind by the vice factotum, outlying the requests and petitions passed down from his father's senatorum to his care. Why old Anthonid Lucius bothered with the traditions of their far off home world, even after millennia of separation, was beyond him. Especially the tradition that let senior officers of the flagship deliberate on the course of action best suited for the dynasty. It was clearly within the dynasty's charter of trade to do as they willed outside imperial space, why should his father be bound to the opinions of his underlying? He certainly disproved of Sigismund, his eldest son, whether he attended sanatorium sessions or not. It inhibited swift action. Sigismund was yet again thankful his command was a sword-class frigate. No standing on tradition here.

"Boring, nope, boring… pilgrims? Nope." Sigismund skirted through what amounted to a glorified to-do-list until finally settling on one that sounded interesting. A far off world, abandoned after a diversionary action by the Imperial guard, crawling with orks, and petitioned by a noble war heroine. This sounded very promising.

Sigismund turned to him carto-artifex, a glorified map keeper who advised him on the currents of the warp, and called for his attention. The man, if one can say such of thing of a member of the navis nobilite, was a junior navigator with the infamous house Nostromo. He was also insufferably smug, narcissistic, and unfortunately, very good at his trade.

"Master Nostromo," he called to the cloaked figure stood which off to his right. It stood near an alcove with piles of star charts, sipping at a glass of wine worth more than Sigismund's wardrobe.

"Nostromo!" Sigismund called again. Still, the mutant navigator ignored him. "Remi!"

"What!" spat the navigator caustically, finally turning his hooded head towards the lord and master of the _Semper Fidelis_.

"I need an estimate navigator," sighed Sigismund dejectedly. The two often quarreled, this posturing was nothing new. "Some place in the galactic west, Jorunga sector. Relatively close to Persius Gama."

The navigator smacked his lips and put down his wine with purposeful languidly. "Some place, captain? The Jorunga sector has more par secs than you have beard stubble. Which reminds me, incidentally, what do you do that is more important than keeping decently groomed? It's disgusting."

The captain breathed in slowly and left his command throne, scoring a sinuous smile from the Nostromo. He leaned in to allow for a discussion which would be more private. The captain often wished to have the navigator shot for insubordination, but then he would end up elbow deep in reparation to his house. The Navis Nobilite were untouchable. Essential to all warp travel and secured by treaty and contracts the length of a planets equator. Dealing with Remi was taxing, but also essential, Emperor knew the navigator primaris was even more cankerous and incomprehensible. The warp could twist a man and snap his mind in the time it took for his heart to beat twice. These…mutants, spent their lives staring into that daemon infested abyss to guide the ships of the Imperium to safe harbor. It put them in an advantageous position, and they knew it.

"All I need is an approximation, to know if it's possible to get there from here. Or would you rather we run out of air and water before then?"

"You peons might, but we in the spire would be fine. We have… contingencies." The navigator ignored his captain's murderous glare and gathered an esoteric map of the surrounding constants. Each house had its own cyphers, which were partially physical and partially psychic. It was not unlike translating a dream, with the help of notations, and all in the blink of an eye. Even when deciphered, they were cryptic, and required as much intuition as technical expertise. Only the Nostromo could read these chart's cyphers, which made comprehending the implications of even the slightest warp jump possible.

"Yes." Answered the navigator.

"Yes, what?" growled the captain.

"Yes, it is worth it. Yes, we will have enough supplies for your underlying. Yes." The navigator shrugged exasperatedly. "Should I speak slower, perhaps in speak low gothic?"

The Nostromo spoke as if to a dim witted child. He never deigned to use any of the tools at his disposure for such a task, each worth its own fortune. Had the navigator ever been wrong then Sigismund would have had grounds to replace him. But he had, until now, never been.

"But if you want more details then that, I need to know the name of the planet we are expected to arrive. It is essential to coordinate with Navigator Primaris Pater."

"Kursk," grumbled the captain, jaw clenched in restrained anger. "The damn dust ball is called Kursk."

Few places aboard a void ship were as feared as the navigator spire. The enginarium was a mysterious temple dedicated to the machine god, the domain of the Adeptus Mechanicus and their incomprehensible engines. From there the drive master tended the heart of the plasma core, second only to the enginseer prime whose followers were all those sworn to the Omnissiah. Those laymen foolish enough to merit punishment were sent to die within its halls, performing duties fit only for servitors, which many became after they expired from heat exhaustion, radiation poisoning, or unfortunate plasma venting accidents. Given the fact that the _Semper Fidelis_ was one of those rare ships with auxiliary plasma banks, those accidents were common enough to merit dreading.

Those more fortunate were sent to toil in the underdecks where the filth that accumulated across the kilometer and a half long ship was distilled, and where chemical torrents rushed beneath ill maintained gangplanks. Feces and rotting foodstuff pooled in great bilge tanks the size of hive city hab blocks. Saturated engine coolants stored in armored vats hosted hordes of nightmarishly mutated vermin between the recesses of their curvature. It was a dirty, unpleasant life, but barring the occasional flesh eating mutant, it was tolerable. The ship's twist catcher Devros, the man responsible for hunting down the often feral mutants that risked overcrowding the sumps, even enjoy it. In an Imperium that religiously feared the witch, the mutant, and the alien, the twist catcher even put the less savage of them to good use. He fed them in exchange for their help tracking down the dangerous ones, even calling a few friend over the years. It was very lonely in the bilges.

Those even more fortunate worked tirelessly on the gun decks. These were pressed ganged criminals whose home worlds had clamored for the opportunity to hand them over to a generous rogue trader. These indebted slaves hauled shells the sizes of habs, hundreds pulling chains to elevate the ammunition out of their magazines, which fed the macro cannons in time of war. These batteries of monumental size clung from the outer hull, unarmored and vulnerable, ready to fire death and destruction across the unbelievable distances that separated ships in the void. Men here were the first to die in the event of a catastrophic failure, or simply a retaliatory strike. Hundreds would be blow out to freeze and choke to death in the emptiness beyond the hull of the _Semper Fidelis_. But these men also had hope, for a recommendation from their battery captain could see them elevated to the rank of ship rating.

These ratings lived just below the mid decks, in the sweltering heart of the ship between the warp engine and the plasma core, and were trusted enough to be left to toil in small groups or even alone. From sanitation to cookeries, these men and women, ever fearful of returning to their previous lives under the lash, kept the ship's unessential systems functioning. A few with aptitude even progressed further. They became voidsmen, who worked in the lighter bays, armory, and luxury compartments, or crawled through broken life support system to rewire faulty connections. Those who distinguished themselves even further became trusted voidsmen, given free range of most of the ship below the command deck. These few were as free as a civilian could ever hope to be on an imperial ship, allowed shore leave, and even had contact with more than just petty officers.

These officers bunked were midshipmen, separate from everyone else. They ate, worked, slept, and socialized in privileged spaces bestowed them by rank. Pilots, gun captains, bosums, damage control experts, medicae staffers, ministorum clerics, seneschals, and atmospheric reclamators all spent their free watches in the roomier quarters offered to them. They lived, served, and died never meeting another soul below deck.

The last and most powerful caste aboard the ship was the senior staff, whose roles on the ship were the most crucial, and rewarded.

The master at arms, commander of all militant forces aboard the _Semper Fidelis_. The master of ordinance, whose cannon wrought the end of worlds. The master helmsman, whose steady hand guided the warship in the worst of storms. The master of etherics, whose auspex could elucidate the mysteries of entire solar systems within minutes. The chief surgeon, whose skill had saved thousands of wounded and stricken alike. The vice factotum, whose purse knew the wealth of worlds. The first officer, companion and replacement for the captain. And finally, the lord and master, whose decisions dictated the fate of the twenty-five thousand souls that called the ship home.

The command decks berth them all except for two of the most feared and reviled organs of command, loathed for their unnatural calling but whose existence allowed the ship to exist. The witch's tower which housed the choir of astra telepathica psykers, whose minds sent missives across the warp. Even more feared were the denizens of the navigators' spire. While the wards protecting the astropaths from the psychic turmoil of life also allowed the command staff to visit in times of need, no one, for no reason, ever wanted or set foot within the spire that housed the scions of house Nostromo.

House guards armed and armored to the highest standard and independent of the ship's hierarchy defended their masters here. An army onto themselves, they guarded the spire that duplicated every life sustaining function of the ship for the comfort of its guests. A world within a world. Every void ship required one, and although they often differed, they all segregated the mutant strain of humanity bioengineered by the Emperor himself to navigate the hellish realm of the warp. The only means of superluminal travel known to man.

Each navigator possessed a third eye nestled within their brow. Few had ever seen it in the flesh and most who had, died the very instant they witnessed the kernel of the warp's true nature within. Worst yet, the eerie effervescent light of the warp shone through it. It beckoned to be watched, only to then devour the fool who did. Consequently, all navigator bloodlines hid the third eye from sight. The method differed from navigator to navigator but was usually inspired by their own private eccentricities. This spire in particular held the dubious honor of housing three such navigators.

Navigator Primaris Pater Nostromo was the senior most scion. Well past his first century, the decrepit creature was incoherent most days. Once ensconced within the navigator's chair however, Pater came alive and was capable of guiding a ship through the mercurial eddies of the warp for months at a time without more than the trivial matter of eliminating bodily waste, which the chair regulated, along with the vital functions of any who interfaced with it. He was seconded by Remi Nostromo, a skilled navigator who had yet to reach his apex, yet felt well within its reach. Finally, came Meyer, a timid Nostromo will little to no talent in navigation proper, but impressive knowledge of cryptology, psychic imprinting, xenolinguistics, and none too shabby recaff brewing skills. His presence on the ship was felt to be gratuitous, especially by his peer. Ironically enough, he was the most pleasant of the navigators to speak with, as his timid and generally friendly nature made the presence of his murderous third eye bearable, almost. Meyer, at least, had not yet shorn the soul of a spire servant, unlike his fellows.

It was to him that the unpleasant task of awakening his senior had fallen to. Meyer careful entered the sanctum of the Primaris, its stately appointed embellishments rivaling that of a world bound imperial governor. Rich nano-woven silk bandoliers dripped from the tall gothic arches and carved pillars of his dormitory. The floor's authentic hard wood came from a world that had died eons ago. Its dark recesses were impenetrable, and only the shallow death like rhythm of Pater's breathing could be heard.

Holding a tapering candle as the only source of illumination, Meyer approached the sea of covers that snaked over Pater's resting place. Beside it, huddled like a dog at his master's bedside, was the child retainer the Primaris so cruelly fancied. Its eyes reflected the only source of illumination in the gloom that perpetually accompanied his master. The lights, Pater insisted, were uncomfortable to his unnatural sight.

As navigators aged, they were prone to more disturbing mutations then the last. Meyer himself was without hair or any kind on his body, and hid his patagia underneath voluminous robes. Remi's were subtler, he moved with an unnatural grace and his translucent blood sealed any wounds he suffered, healing before it could scar. Pater's were…. Indiscernible, which made them all the more frightening. All that was certain was that the old bat was as mad as a grots' uncle.

"Master," begged Meyer at Pater's bedside. Fearfully, he pressed on. But the creature only fidgeted in its womb like tomb of silk. "Primaris, sir, the captain requests transit." Beside him, the boy's brow furrowed. He knew the folly of waking his master even at such a tender age.

After a few more moments of beckoning, Pater slowly opened his eyes. His pupils, large black voids that threatened to swallow light whole, shot into pinpricks. His lips babbled, but he was not yet fully awake. When the gash on his forehead finally pealed open, the roiling mass that could have one time been an eye shifted towards Meyer. The boy, with his head between his knees began to wretch as the warp seeped into the material world around him. The poor thing was painfully silent, fearful of offending the monster it was bound to. Finally the warp eye closed and Pater stirred into a sitting position.

"What is it?' he rasped, a wet ripping sound that cleared only after further effort. "I rest, imbecile, tell the captain I served him only yesterday!"

Meyer cleared his throat, letting the methuselah blink the cobwebs from his mind.

"My Primaris, you have been sleeping for days. A week almost." It was true, the child was practically skin and bones. No one had fed him, for fear of waking Pater, and the child had clearly feared leaving his master's bedside.

"A week? That long… you say. Then take me to the chair. I can't stand this wretched place. Oh, and extinguish that damnable wick while you're at it, moron."

Meyer quickly found Pater's wardrobe and hid the candle from Pater's sight. He slipped one of the many robes from its perch and handed it to his senior, careful to keep the candle behind his back. After stubbornly struggling with the trappings of his calling, Pater gripped his child retainer's skull and used it as support while he lifted his carcass from the enveloping bed. The Primaris eschewed walking sticks, or any of the hundred staffs they had in the spire. No, he preferred the feeling of human suffering to buoy his dignity. The child would be a suitable support until he grew too tall, a day the poor soul no doubt dreamed of, if it could still dream that is.

As the two navigator walked the corridors from Pater's sanctum to the occulus where the chair awaited them, news spread across the spire that the Navigator Primaris had risen, and all the artificial lumen globes dimmed to practically nothing. Still, the cankerous old man spat a litany of hate. Meyer sighed, he couldn't see in the dark like Pater, so he weathered the storm until the natural lighting of the stars made it possible for both Pater and him to function. With a painful groan, the ancient navigator aligned his body with the mind impulse grafts of the chair, and sagged in relief as he became one with its miraculous engineering.

"Has the ritual sacrifice been prepared?" asked the Primaris.

"It has, master." Meyer had been sure to prepare all the necessary materials. It served no one to upset the old creature, and Pater was notoriously impatient. As if on cue, the Primaris mumbled beneath his breath, nocturnal eyes darting about. His senility and constant awareness of the warp tides around him muddling his perception.

"Its… yes… smooth like… marbles, good. Prepare my wine. Wretch" he spat to no one in particular "opals in night sky… forever burning." The navigator did not suffer the material plane well. He had spent too long peering into the warp, or journeying in his dreams. The trick was knowing which instructions were delusional ranting, and genuine requests. Nodding to the servants hidden around the armor-cryss domed room, Meyer watched them decant expensive amasac into the cupped hand of the child retainer. Peter enjoyed his intoxicants at body temperature.

"The omen, frakwit, is it ready? Purple sheets tying necks in…." Pater muttered darkly, "I hate cheese, it stinks."

Meyer turned to the marble bowl that stood feats away from the navigation chair. It was a classically sculpted bird bath, its polished white slabs veined with pitch black lines. Knowing what Pater wanted, he held out his hands and a hooded servant carrying a gilded cage stepped forth. With practiced gestures, Meyer enticed the dove into his hands, and then snapped its neck. Drawing a silvered blade from another servant's platter, he sliced down the breast of the creature and carved in the sigils of the Nostromo house, letting the blood pool into the bowl bellow. Its pattern would instruct them on the proper way to breach realities and enter the warp.

The disturbing slurping sounds behind Meyer informed him that Peter had already started to imbibe. The dove had bled an image of a willow's roots spreading. Meyer was sure of the omen's meaning.

"The tides favor a diffused entry my Primaris, the paths are narrow but lead to a strong current. Choose well which you travel." Meyer intoned the traditional response to this particular pattern. It was not criticism, but Pater took it as such.

"Bugger off you mindless newt, I guide the ship, not you! Why are my toes so… big?"

Meyer sighed, the servants dispersing before Peter opened his eye and generated the warp miasma that had killed so many of their predecessor. The child was still tipping his fingers against the Primaris' lips when Peter unleashed the hell inside his eye. Meyer looked away as yet another innocent soul was burned from its carcass and sent roiling into the warp. A half cackle drew his attention back to Pater's gibbering.

"Ugh, I did it again. Meyer, come here and pass me the amasec!"

Navigators were far from neurotypical individuals. Their minds were hard wired to process the maddening scape of the warp. Even within bloodlines, navigators experienced the warp differently, for Pater, it was an unbelievable symphony of light, multi-hued and sparkling. It was the only light he could still experience without crippling discomfort. Cords of luminescence guided his way, discord the evidence of warp events or shallow reefs. It was a sea of souls, every one a different note, every one a thought set free into the aether. Pater followed the most soothing melodies, their beauty enchanting, and their expression mirthful.

He was hardwired into the chair, his every synapse firing being translated by the cogitators appended to the miraculous machine. He felt the brushing of the warp as a prickle against his skin, a twitch of his fingers informing the helmsmen dozens of meters beneath him to change course and pursue the symphonies in his mind's eye. The Gellar field, the thin membrane that separated the endlessly shifting sea of souls from the ship, allowed it to exist in this slip stream of raw energy. As daemons smashed themselves against it, Pater felt it across his skin as raking claws. A nod of his head reinforced those sections most at risk. He was part of the ship, his nervous system a messenger to a hundred different systems. Alerting all, protecting all, creating his own symphony of machine and men to rival the aethers.

As part of the ship, Pater lost conscious experience of time. He could have been guiding the ship for hours, days, or weeks. The life sustaining chair maintaining his semi-conscious stupor until they dropped back into real space. Energized by its mysterious powers and the vicarious sensations of the warp, he was more alive now then ever. His endurance of the exhausting effort required to shepherd a ship through the impossible vistas of the empyrean was second to none, but it was not unlimited. Just as a soothing note attracted his attention, his senses taxed, he missed the critical junction that would lead the _Semper Fidelis_ away from a tangling of currents.

The symphony darkened, notes clashing, and generated a cacophonous dissonance that ripped at his mind and sent his skin shivering uncontrollably. The tremors were a tactile manifestation of the Gellar shield wavering. It was losing consistency and weakening, just as the ship barreled into a symphonic movement of singular intensity.

Evangeline watched the master chrono on the command lectern tick away. Seven days, fourteen hours, and thirty-six minutes in the Empyrean with no anomalous report. Her watch had been uneventful so far. One more hour to go before handing it over to Sigs again. Warp travel was never easy. It involved all manner of strange occurrences and because the warp reacted to human emotions, it usually got stranger as the immersion progressed. Not to mention time dilation, which made subjective time keeping, like the chrono Evangeline stared at, little more than a guessing game. Ships that had been in the warp hours had been known to arrive at port months later, and vice versa. Any jump you came out of however, was considered a success. The alternative was all too frightening to contemplate.

As her fingers absently caressed the head of the command scepter slotted in the captain' throne, a rune blinked into existence on the lectern. It informed the commander that the gun decks were experiencing difficulties.

"Master of Ordinance, report!" Evangeline bellowed the order with all the over compensation of a junior officer. The command crew were veterans however and much to her relief, had never complained, obeying succinctly. The Master of Ordinance's gruff voice rang back.

"Aye, aye commander. Reports of a minor altercation within the pressgang crew are in progress along the port side batteries, decks 12 to 16, that's third battery ma'am."

Evangeline's eyes darted across the warning runes, a multitude of neighboring systems now reporting issue, their numbers increasing in quantity and severity. The runes blazed to life so fast she could scarcely understand their meaning. Before she could ask, the command deck erupted in reports, data wafers and binaric chants filling the cramped confine of the bridge.

The ordinance section yelled out as large tremor coursed through the ship. "There was an explosion in the point defense systems bellow third battery sir! Gun captain Everett is confirmed dead sir! Infernus master informed, damage control on their way!"

"Sealing battery sections! Armsmen deployed to the munitions magazines. Chief Ribella reporting for duty in the middeck," the master militant reported to the command throne.

Omnisianic congregator Leitchwig, the techpriest envoy that coordinated the different factions of the Mechanicus across the ship calmly walked up to the commander. The machine priest screeched above the reports and counter orders filling the room.

"Statement: I am receiving a data communion from the drive master and the warp core enginseers. Message: Magos Tesslin wishes me to inform you that whatever you are doing is upsetting the generator, a catastrophic drop out of warp space is a 36% probability if further detonation proceed towards the central deck core."

"But I'm not doing anything," said the young commander, panicking on the command throne. Lights blinked everywhere, data runes scrolled feverishly across her overhead viewers, junior officers were gathering around her with reports from the cogitator banks.

Leitchwig increased the amplification of his vox unit, forcing the officers to clamp their hands over their ears. "Conclusion: then your inactivity is what is going to cause the warp core to malfunction." Answered the congregator matter-of-factly.

"Enough!" screamed the commander at the crowd leering over her, she catapulting herself out of the captain's throne.

She gripped the edge of the command lectern and activated the ship wide vox. "This is commander Evangeline Lucius, acting first officer. Code black is declared, I repeat, code black. All unessential personnel is to report to their berth and await further instruction. This is a complete lock down, effective immediately!"

The junior officers that had gathered around the commander stood stock still, paper sheaf in hand, eyes wide at their commander's sudden resolve.

"What are you waiting for? Go wake my lazy brother up, now!" Evangeline grabbed a report from a midshipman barely her junior in age and scanned it rapidly. A warp riot, madness had claimed part of the crew. The ministorum had performed their rites, and the ship purified before the jump. The Geller shields were still functional. The navigator had not mentioned any problems. Why was this happening, why now?

It was not usually in her purview to negotiate crew disputes, but Sola's role extended far beyond that of vice factotum. Sigs trusted her, depended on her, and she relished the privilege it bestowed upon her. She had been called down to the atmospheric reclamators' hall to discuss the unscheduled termination of their assigned duties. They refused to crawl into the underdecks, not the true underdecks that process the bilge sump, but those that allowed for the maintenance of essential systems between decks. Another guilder had died there this month, due to an electrical mishap.

Were the techpriest inclined to debase themselves in the cramp quarters, this could have been settled, but they claimed a higher calling and refused to assume the role of the lay technicians. They had more important duties, or so their responses expressed. So Sola had been called to convince the reclamators to return to work.

It was in mid argument that the tremor had started, knocking the glasses of recycled water onto the deck floor. The lumen strips that illuminated the hall went next. The gaggle of lay technicians stared dumbly at the ceiling as the red emergency lights came on line and began to debate their significance. Sola tried to reach the bridge for an update but only received an automated message informing her that the vox lines were being prioritized. A few more failed attempts hadn't solved the issue. Then, Evangeline's voice rang out across the hall declaring a code black. It was firm, and concise, befitting the rank she occupied.

"Good girl," smiled Sola. Evangeline was showing the promise the vice factotum knew she possessed deep down. Sola reached across the mediation table and activated the personal vox channel she shared with the captain. It was time to use some of that privilege she worked so hard to earn.

"Sigs, are you there? Can you tell me what is going on?"

"I'm up, I'm up, everything is good." Mumbled a groggy Sigismund.

"No Sigs, all is not good. You're sister just called a code. Care to fill me in?" Sola heard a panicked junior officer get into the captain's vox thief's range. She could only make out half the conversation between him and the captain, but it bode ill.

"Listen, Sola." Sigismund spoke slowly and calmly into the vox. "There's a warp induced mutiny in the battery decks. Where are you?"

"With the reclamator guild," answered the factotum worriedly.

"A little too close for comfort then. The bulkheads are going to be sealed by now, but these bastards have access to plenty of tools. Stay put, arm yourself, and wait for Ribella. She should get to your deck soon enough."

"Understood." Sola stood up and slipped her hand within a carefully designed slit along her dress, reaching for the compact auto pistol Sigs insisted she carry. Checking the slide, just as she had been shown by Ribella, she breathed deeply.

"Alright gentlemen, I suppose you heard the gist of it. Use these tables to barricade the entrances and remain calm. Help is on the way."

The technicians nodded and fumbled to follow her instructions. Being some of the most well treated ratings on the ship, they were unfamiliar of the brutal reality of serving aboard a warship. Violence was inevitable aboard such a ship, though it usually came from outside sources and were met by the armsmen and storm troopers first. The novelty of the experience was terrifying, but Sola was not entirely inexperienced with the concept. Both from before her tenure with the Lucius dynasty, and from her involvement in Sigismund's particular brand of leadership.

The first attempt to breach the bulkheads of the reclamator guild were felt minutes later, and continued for many more minutes after.

Ribella activated her shock maul and readied to face down 2nd battery's mob. Shot gun wielding armsmen breached the compartment bulkhead and spread out to take down the mutineers. They stood in indecisive shock as they took in the scene, their chief bosum included. The warp played terrible tricks on the mind, making someone's worst fear a reality. After butchering their gang mates, the madmen had fallen onto each other in packs. Pressgang workers laid in bloody, battered mess upon the deck corridors. Many had their eyes gouged out or their face bitten off. Dismembered body parts were strewed about and the recycled air reeked of charnel house slaughter.

"Open fire!" ordered the chief. Those condemned souls which remained in the corridors were shred to pieces mid feast or murder. Those caught in their grasps given merciful deaths or tallied up as collateral damage. A spanner wielding man, flesh flayed from his frame, charged Ribella with an inhuman howl. She cracked her baton down on his skull and left the madman convulsing on the deck from the electric discharge.

"Spread out and sweep. Anyone out of their berths is fair game!" Ribella marched down the blood covered corridors, barely wide enough for two men to walk shoulder to shoulder. She had to step over vicious pools of blood that had formed around the victims of the warp madness. Even during the worst of the hive wars she had witnessed as an arbites, never had there been so much senseless killing. A cross section sent two mutineers crashing against her thick armsmen body armor. She used her shoulder to shove the thickly muscled laborers back and shattered the first's knee with a powerful downward strike. The second, waiting for his mate to fall aside, raised a bloodied gaff hook still dripping gore. As he moved towards Ribella, she trust the tip of her maul into his throat. The man folded onto himself with a warble, his vocal cords shocked spastically.

Every stroke of her maul incapacitated a foe in the close quarter confines of the thorough way. Ribella had long mastered urban fighting techniques in her past life, which made her the perfect vanguard. With each further step, shotgun blasts echoed in her wake as the armsmen and bosums under her command let Red Ribella live up to her namesake.

The pacifications proceeded until Ribella's enforcers reached the battery proper. The chasm like component was dozens of meters tall and twice as wide. Gantries and plank ways crossed its section with massive pulleys and chain obscuring line of sight. Barking her orders, Ribella sent her squads up the gantries to secure the high ground. A writhing mass of bodies turned to meet her at the 12th deck's bulk ward, above her, four more decks allowed for the murderous madmen to outflank, or worst, cut off her lines of reinforcement. At least the macro cannon shell magazines had been shut and locked as per warp transit protocol. It would not make her day easier if the mutineers had access to enough ordinance to blow the entire component into the void.

With a deck shaking cry, the mass of frenzied killers waded their way towards her and her firing line. Ribella pressed the transmission stud on her armor's gorget and gave the signal. In seconds, dozens of mutineers flooded the deck with their blood as over watching armsmen on the gantries pumped shell after shell into the riotous mass. Combine with the point blank fire from Ribella's position, the throng had considerably lessened. But not enough to stop the survivors from swarming the chief bosum. She swung her maul with great precision, knocking her assailant to the ground or shocking them into unconsciousness. Finally the mob won out, their filthy hands and bloodied tools hooking into her armor and dragging her to the deck. There she howled, defiantly resisting the doom which crept over her.

The particular mass hysteria that had claimed Ostwick's 36th pressgang had convinced them that the _Semper Fidelis_ burned at the behest of a daemon in the cargo holds. They had battered and butchered all those under its influence and finally reached the forbidden hold, an illusionary blaze hastening their mission. With zealous intent, they set upon breaching the bulk ward door. The 36th had once been murderers and heretics, but they would soon be heroes for saving the ship. The captain would no doubt reward them for having cleansed his domain of those mind controlled freaks and the infamous creature that dwelled in the hold. Warm bunks and easy duties were theirs to be had. All they had to do was breach this gate and slay the creature.

With liberated plasma torches and industrial sheers they set upon the door. Taking it apart to ease its mechanism free. After long minutes they finally managed. With the clanking of heavy cycling gears, they pried the portal open and were wafted with a putrid smell. Hot and humid, the forbidden hold was pitch black and smelled of rotten eggs, fungi, and animal urine. Ostwick's gang leader stepped up to the darkness.

"You're reign is over daemon, it is time you reap what you have sowed. In the Name of the Emperor!"

The leader exploded in a pink mist of pulverized organs as he flew back into the fold of his waiting followers. His chest was collapse and he gargled incoherently as he died in his mates arms. They hurried to raise their improvised weapons and awaited a daemon that never came. Instead, the bristling shape of a muscle bound nob stepped from the darkened hold into the red tinged light. The ork's knuckles were red with the press gang leader's blood.

'Oie! what'cha babbling about? Why yuz gitz messin'with me doorz?" Knuckles panned his bug eyed gaze across the humies. They were covered in blood and froth drooled down their chin. Their bodies were scored with wounds and their cloths were in tatters. They paced back and forth chittering and sizing him up with strangely lit eyes.

"Ya wanna tussle huh?" the beastly ork chuckled darkly as he limbered up. "Capt'n ain't gonna miss gits like yuz, Iz thinks. Go ahead, make Knuckle happy."

In a warp induced howl, Ostwick's 36th charged, and were promptly relieved of duty.

Having armed himself with his family's finery, Sigismund prowled the reclamation deck with Remi at his side. In an uncharacteristic offer, Remi Nostromo joined the captain's efforts to reach the besieged Sola. The two were slowly making their way past discarded bodies. More than once, Remi had cleared an entire corridor of madmen with the blink of his third eye, setting mutineers ablaze and shearing the tethers that bound their souls to their bodies. It was a sobering reminder to always stand behind him and avert your eyes when he unceremoniously stepped up and lowered his hood.

"Why you insist on recruiting such substandard specimens is absolutely moronic, Sigs." Remi had taken to calling the captain by his pet name, like Sola, to chafe him. He covered his brow with his hood as yet another dozen bodies laid smoking at his feet. The smell was strangely reminiscent of grilled grox.

"Not now Remi." Sigismund took point again, his silvered aspis shield raised. The masterfully crafted shield was decorated with a majestic lion's head, and secreted within its core was a refractor module capable of blunting most attacks directed at it. When it worked that is. In his other hand, Sigismund carried an ornate powered gladius, whose energy field could deliver a lethal thrust capable of penetrating even power armor. To remedy any lack of firepower, he also had a forearm mounted storm bolter on the same arm.

In comparison, Remi was unarmed but twice as deadly. He had long enjoyed the threat that his mysterious third eye posed, and had practiced its use extensively. It was the only weapon he needed, even if somewhat indiscriminate, it proved effective. The navigator followed Sigismund's lead silently, his unnatural grace eerily reminiscent of the loathed Eldar race.

"It is never time to discuss your immeasurable lack of leadership is it? How could you let Sola get into such a dangerous situation? Why does she even tolerate you?"

Shots rang out further down the auxiliary thorough way they were using, momentary flashes of light disintegrating the slugs. At least the ancient war spirit of the shield had been attentive. Sigismund triggered a short burst from his storm bolter, the result was a torrent of explosive shells that shredded the mutineer hiding behind a nearby structural support.

"Because unlike you, Nostromo, I'm a pleasant companion to frequent." Retorted Sigismund after the danger had passed.

"We get along swimmingly when I visit her quarters." Remi replied with snarky condescension.

"Wait?" the captain interrupted, lowering his guard to turn towards the navigator. "_You_ were invited to her quarters?" Remi only smirked arrogantly.

Before Sigismund could press the issue, a mutineer flew out from the cross section and crumbled against its bulk ward. The pair dropped into combat stances as Knuckles squeezed into the corridor, a mismatched two-handed axe in his hefty mitts.

Shortly after his first tussle, Knuckles' orky instincts had kicked in and compelled him to assemble the monstrosity he now held. It was a heavy hafted weapon with a mix of miscellaneous collected industrial parts. Knuckles had even added spikey bits to insure maximum rippy-ness.

"Oie, boss man! I waz wundering where ye waz at." The nob almost looked happy, waving in the constrained confines."

"What are you doing here Knuckles? The ship's on lock down." Sigismund tried to step around the pools of blood seeping down the grills of the deck, making his way towards the giant xeno.

"There's fightin," he simply said, shrugging. Sigismund didn't care to press his concern. It was perfect orky logic right there. "Alright then, you're with me and Remi, watch our backs. Just… let us pass."

"Right boss." Knuckles backed up into the cross section and let his humies go first then lumbered behind them. Remi could heart the pop of crushed limbs as the ork followed their lead. He sighed. This is what you get when you mingle, he muttered to himself.

Before long they reached the reclamation guild hall. Discarded tools laid at its bulkhead entrance. The portal itself was in a disgraceful state. Gouges had been melted into the steel and parts of the mechanism were pulled out. It looked like the madmen had actually made the portal less functional in their attempted to open it. Whatever madness had taken them, they still had the sense to abandon this endeavor and move to something more rewarding. From the far off sounds of shotgun blasts, it appeared they had been woefully wrong.

Sigismund exchanged glances with Remi and pointed at the door, as if expecting the navigator's third eye to be able to open it. The eye imparted had many abilities, none as mundane as opening jammed doors. With an incredulous sneer the Nostromo shook his head. Sigs turned to Knuckles.

"You're up buddy. Go at it." Sigs encouraged.

Knuckled nodded emphatically and punched the steel door in appraisal. He moved closer, pressing his slab like face to the portal and banged it again, listening to the reverberation. The ork nodded again and with a toothy grin, ripped the access pad by the portal's frame and gutted the wiring.

Sigismund instinctually looked about for wandering tech-priests, who certainly would not approve of this mishandling of technology. When he realized how unlikely it would be to find a magos wandering the blood stained corridors, in the midst of a warp induced riot no less, he returned his attention to Knuckles.

The brutish ork was chewing on some wires, sparks flying out of his mouth. He seemed inured to the power coursing through them. Like most orks, Knuckles brushed off what would be otherwise be lethal for a man. None the less, after crossing some angrily sparking contacts, Knuckles looked up with a blood shot eye and gave Sigismund a thumbs up. Moments after, the door popped ajar.

"How did you do that?" Remi said astounded.

"I dun know how, I just do," shrugged the brutish xeno. The knowledge was just there when he needed it. Hardwired into his brain by Gork and Mork knows what. Knuckles had an undeniable need to fix stuff, as he put it. He had built his trukk from scrap, same as the axe he held. When he looked at things, visions of destructive machines just filled his mind, the side effect being that he could hotwire a bulkhead on lock down when he needed too, apparently.

Sigismund smiled broadly. The day he had bested Knuckles in combat had been one of the best in recent memory. There was no end of adventures to be had with a big bloke like that. As long as Sigismund held the bigger end of the stick, he could count of Knuckles obeying. He rued the day he wouldn't however, which could be fast approaching. The ork had clearly grown in size since that fateful day, and the captain knew exactly what that meant.

With a curt nod to his fellows, Sigismund slipped passed the half opened door. He relished coming to the aid of damsels in distress. After a few steps into the besieged hall, Sigismund was shot flat onto his back, his xeno weaved buccaneer coat taking the brunt of it.

"Sigs!" yelled Sola, "by the Omnissiah, couldn't you have called out first?" the factotum dropped her autopistol and kneeled at Sigismund's side. Behind her, hidden amidst the improvised barricade, the technicians peeked to see what was happening. Remi and Knuckles slipped into the room seconds after the shot, the ork wrenching the hatch in a screech of tortured metal. The navigator sighed in disappointment. The captain's antics often ended in such ridiculous spectacle. Knuckles on other hand, privately reconsidered his place in the pecking order, his xeno mind urging him to take the opportunity to assert his dominance. The urge abated the moment the captain proved to be unhurt however.

"You really need to work on your reaction to being saved," grunted Sigismund as he sat up with Sola's help.

"Who said I needed help?" the factotum chided.

"Well, seeing as Chief Ribella hasn't arrived yet, I was thinking, maybe, you?"

"Oh, she was here a while ago. She said the deck wasn't safe yet so I volunteered to stay with the technicians while she sabotaged the bulk ward's mechanism to lock us in. you might want to consider giving the woman a raise, you should have seen the state she was in. she looked like she had been trampled by a heard of grox."

With a pained groan the captain stood himself up, rolling his shoulder to ease the stiffness of Sola's shot. She looked up at with an impish smile and Sigismund narrowed his eyes suspiciously, knowing what that look usually forebode.

"What?" Sigismund groaned.

"Oh nothing much, I just negotiated the return of the reclamator's guild services while we were waiting," said the vice factotum playfully, "how was _your_ day?"

All told, the mutiny had been short lived and well contained. Evangeline was praised for her handling of the situation and garnered much deserved respect from the command crew. The cost had been surprisingly high for the pressgangs afflcited by the warp madness. It would warrant another recruitment drive when next they reached safe harbor. When Pater had been call to answer for his lack of forewarning, Meyer had been sent to smooth the issue. It truth, there was not much that could be done. The ship had weathered the empyrean, and that was all that could be asked of the navigator house.

Four days later, the _Semper Fidelis_ broke out of the warp into the Kursk system. The crew had been reorganized by then, and the decks cleared of any remains. Astropathic reports were sent to the _Son of Ultramar_ as protocol required. Sigismund did not doubt he would be required to present an account of the events of the dynasty senatorum. These tedious administrative details always rankled him. There was time before that would happen however, enough to make up for the costly tragedy of their warp jump. According to the petition, the left over forces of an imperial army remained marooned on Kursk, an ork infested world. From the standard Imperial dating system, the poor souls had been on their own for the better part of a decade.

The ship's jaunt, which had subjectively taken only 11 days, had dropped it six months later into material space. This sort of time dilation was common, exemplifying why a retreating imperial force, followed by a demobilization of its regiments, and their subsequent warp transits, had let ten years pass since the unfortunate last stand of Lady Della and her Persephonian comrades. By Administratum standards, this rescue mission had been a lightning fast response.

According to her reports, the men marooned were highly capable and determined. There was hope they still lived, and a noble house's fortune in thrones made Lady Della's insistence on a rescue very palatable to Sigismund. Additionally, an unusual stellar body nicknamed the Beholder held telltale signs of xeno design. If the rescue would go poorly, there was still profit to be had plundering the strange planetoid.

These were the days Sigismund relished being the scion of a rogue trader dynasty. Profit, adventure, and glory awaited. All within his grasp.


	2. Chapter 2

The nebula was wonderfully beautiful. Clouds of brilliant hues parted before the prow of the _Semper Fidelis_. Greens, blues, purples, and golden streams studded with bright foreign stars blanketed the void scape. Its beauty could also prove fatal. Being a relatively small system it had took the ship only two days to arrive within the habitable zone of Kursk. The distance between the mass of roiling plasma that was the system's sun was just perfect for life to exist. Not too far, yet not too close. Gasses could form an atmosphere, water could be found in its liquid form, and life forms could evolve. But not all habitable zones were equal.

From the augury returns, Kursk was a hellish planet, millions like it existed in the galaxy. Practically a wasteland, it had canyons and mountains aplenty but little arable land. Its oceans were chalk full of indigestible minerals, which made even inland sources impossible to drink without filtration due to the planet's natural cycle of water transfer. Finally, the nebula was so dense around the planet that little natural light filtered through. Neither did standard carrier waves for ground to orbit or even intra-system communication. No man had any right to be alive on its surface, which severely cut down the chances of finding the imperial guard survivors, no matter how skilled or motivated they were.

Additionally, the system had been claimed by a tribe of ork which had presumably broken off from the defeated Waaaagh half a sector away. In the years since their defeat the pugnacious greenskins had turned Kursk and its surroundings into their very own paradise. The inherently worthless system became the perfect rallying point. Strategically unimportant enough to fight over and incredibly problematic to assault. It was small, shrouded, packed with aggressive hostiles, and home to the evil omen voidsmen called the Beholder. Only a mad man would set sail within its confines or perhaps a rogue trader, which, at the very least, was ubiquitously synonymous.

An anxious mood hung over the command deck. Not only had the _Semper Fidelis_ weathered a warp riot, but it now skulked within gaseous clouds of void particulates in an effort to pierce the hornet's nest. They had already by-passed three ork patrols, or perhaps they had been supply ships leaving the system, it was hard to say. Ironically, the best way to stay hidden in the void was to figuratively close your eyes and ears, stay quiet, and move as little as possible. This meant shutting down all non-essential systems like the warp core, gun batteries, active auguries, comm arrays, void shields, and letting the plasma core murmur away. They glided along a tenth of their engine's power, letting their accumulated momentum carry them in the direction of the core.

The aging warship detested the skulking, its machine spirit occasionally bucking and groaning, sending pitiful flairs of radioactive energy into the nebulous void. Hopefully, the natural interference of the gas clouds combined with the inattention of the orks would lead them to safety. Still, it was like stomping about in iron clad boots in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. The crew was painfully aware of their vulnerability.

Long painful hours whittled away with a few course corrections in between. The passive auspex could pick up the comparatively loud orkish ships as they passed by tens of thousands of kilometers away, well within battery range of most void born conflicts. With little more than maneuvering thrusters the _Semper Fidelis_ stole away until finally, they arrived at Kursk. They steadily approached the moment of truth. They would have to ignite the full power of the warship in order to carry out their objective. They would, as certainly as a man holding a lantern in the dark of night, reveal themselves to all their enemies. If any were within effective firing range, it could spell the ship's doom. There would be no time to power the void shields, no time to arm the macrocannons, no time with which to fight back. They would die.

"It is simply not worth it!" insisted Evangeline. She and the masters of the ship were standing at attention on the captain's cupola. The title was exaggerated. The _Semper Fidelis_ had three steps and a raised dais on which the command throne sat, nothing more. "If we power up now we will be dead in the water and surrounded by sharks."

"You're concerns are duly noted little sister but I did not come here with the intention of playing nice with the orks." Sigismund rested his chin against his palm, fingers scratching along his stubbly cheeks. Data streamed across his vid-screens, the very same that the masters of the ship held within their data slates, albeit aggregated.

"The auguries do report the likelihood of at least a few ships from the looks of the returns. One of significantly heavier tonnage than our own, captain." The master of etherics stood at attention. He, like the other senior officers, knew that the captain's mind was already made. The best they could do is inform their lord of the variables at play. The lord of the ship was no fool, although he often did foolish things.

"How are our stores? Is the ship responsive? How fast can she be powered up?" questions after questions, Sigismund demanded answers. Those responsible knowing when they were addressed.

"We can engage intensively my lord, but not extensively. Hit-and-runs mostly," answered Lieutenant Bargast, the master of ordinance.

"She's a little stiff after spending so long in stupor captain, but I can wrangle her to action quick enough," followed Lieutenant Ito, the master helmsman.

"Twenty-three-point-four-six-minutes" vocalized Omnissianic congregator Leitchwig, while the other officers took turns. The magos cared not for etiquette. Data had been requested and so data had been offered.

"Right, swift and sure, we strike then power off. Bargast, have the men prepare some torpedoes first. Ito, I'll want you ready to perform evasive maneuvers, we cut and run at the first sign of being out flanked. Leitchwig, I need your people to get her ready in fifteen minutes, no more. Skip some rites if you have to." Sigismund hadn't finished giving out his orders that the magos was blurting angrily in binary. He turned towards the two officers that had not been addressed yet, their specialty more reactive than proactive. "Keever my old friend, have the armsmen at quarters, the xenos will no doubt want to perform boarding actions.

The master-at-arms was a brutal man, body stitched with scars. He hailed from the Maiden's World, a feudal planet dedicated to producing the wives of the Lucius Dynasty's lords. Keever was a knight of the Ravenwing clan, the same as the first lady dynast, Sigismund's mother. A certain family resemblance could be spied in his traits, only older and more worn than Sigismund's own.

The warrior smashed a fist against his breastplate, "Until my dying breath, Raven's blood." Keever marched away in his knightly regalia. In all the years he had served, he had never abandoned the heraldry of his clan. Even wearing a lathe-wrought facsimile of his feudal plates. The master-at-arms proudly wore the antiquated designs of his clan.

"And you my beautiful Eloquell, inform chief confessor Alabast that we will be needing a battle hymn, if you please." The master of the vox tried to hide her smile, nodded, and returned to her station. Since the day she had taken up her office, her melodious voice had increased crew moral markedly. The fear of imminent battle was always lessened when Mistress Eloquell called upon the crew. Sigismund gripped the arms of his throne firmly and steadied his thundering heart. The Emperor favors the bold, he reminded himself.

The _Semper Fidelis_ came alive with the thrum of power, augurs sweeping the obscured void beyond its hull. Immediately, reports rang across the bridge. A thirty megatonne ork kill kroozer circled Kursk in high orbit to the fore, a smaller attack ship half its size and closer to the _Semper Fidelis_' own tonnage lagged behind it. The Emperor had dealt Sigismund a favorable hand. Ork ships were slow, cumbersome, and packed a powerful arsenal. But with their stern presented, they stood a considerable chance of being disabled before they could turn and present arms.

For long minutes the ships hung in silence as the orkish crews hurriedly assumed battle stations, minutes the _Semper Fidelis_ had needed to spring into action. The ork ships began to turn from Kursk's orbit to bare down on the imperial warship but it was too late. Cutting a diagonal between them, the _Semper Fidelis_ groaned as tremors coursed through its hull. The falchion class warship loosed two plasma warheads at close range, a mere fifty thousand kilometers away. A minute and a half later, as the ponderous kill kroozer struggled to change its heading, the torpedoes crashed into its aft section and exploded with the fury of an unbound star. The kroozer's engines followed suit in a cataclysmic explosion that sheered the stern from the rest of its bulky frame. All hope of it maneuvering into firing position had died with the engine section, a critical advantage for the nimble imperial warship.

"Impact confirmed captain. The torpedoes have breached the enemy's hull and shields." The strained voice of the weapons officer cut through the tense silence of the bridge. "Detonation successful." From across his station, a short range augury junior followed excitedly. "Damage confirmed, read aft section destroyed, I repeat, destroyed!"

The bold tactic had presented the ork attack ship with an opportunity for retaliation. As the kill kroozer's innards burst into the void, the _Semper Fidelis_ cut between the kill kroozer and its lesser escort. The attack vector which had allowed for such a resounding success had placed the warship's starboard within the firing arc of the ork ship. Its 'Eavy prow cannonz roared into life accompanied by rows of dorsal mounted macro cannons. The punishing barrage stripped the _Semper Fidelis_' castellan pattern void shields, each shells easily capable of obliterating whole decks on impact. Ordinance the size of hive city habs crossed the thousands of kilometers separating the warring ships eager to find their mark, few did, but their destructive potential resonated through the halls of the imperial warship. The concussive wave traveled through the hull and rupture oxygen lines and power conduits, setting perilous substances ablaze.

The esoteric designs of the machine-spirit woke and heeded its keeper's prayers for salvation. The ancient technology sensed the peril and reinforced the mighty void shield to stave off the fiery doom at hand. The Adeptus Mechanicus rejoiced in the divine work of the Omnissiah and prepared the rites of rekindling peculiar to the castellan pattern. Just as the void shields began to waver, the kinetic energy of the ork guns simply too much for the systems to successfully shunt into the warp, they ignited anew and rebuffed the last of the enemy's shells to hit their mark. The backup shield brimmed with purpose but its exertion had been costly. Precious, blessed implements of the machine god had been rent asunder by the surge and would need to be replace as well as reconsecrated before a rekindling rite could be performed anew. Sigismund knew all this, knew every eccentric detail of his ship, and would not give the orks another opportunity to harm his ship and its crew again.

"All hands, prepare for new heading. Brace, brace, brace!" the captain commanded into the ship wide vox.

The master of the helm, Ito, drove the maneuvering thrusters to critical levels as he turned the warship about to present a flank bristling with macro batteries. The grav-plates struggled to correct the massive inertia of such a maneuver. Without them the crew would have been bashed and broken against the ship's halls. With them, chief surgeon Magda would only have to treat a few concussions. The bridge crew held to their stations, the groaning of the ship's super structure deafening as it echoed along its bones. Sigismund saw a young ensign lose his footing and slide across the bridge to slam against a firing cogitator. Bargast was a few meters away and spared the effort to pull himself towards the youth. Blood had splattered across the data stacks he had collided with but the master of ordinance's firm nod informed the captain the boy was still alive. Slowly the tilt of the deck rescinded, the armored viewing port magnifying the ork attack ship. A quick barrage would settle things now. Either the _Semper Fidelis_ would visit ruination on their foe or it would be forced to speed off at an opposite heading long enough to disengage.

"All batteries fire at will!" ordered Sigismund.

Curt orders from Bargest sent petty officers yelling into their vox horns. The commands travelling down to the gun captains and to their crew. The pressgangs which had long loaded their macro cannons hurried into the deck trenches, covering their ears and praying to the Emperor for protection. The firing of the colossal guns were powerful enough to liquefy the internal organs of any who stood too near. Then, the warship spoke. The starboard and dorsal batteries fired their turbo shells, twice as powerful as standard thunderstrike ordinance and easily capable of penetrating deep within hostile vessels before detonating. The _Semper Fidelis _punched far above her weight and the attack ship, even one of sturdy orkish make, was woefully armored against the storm it could unleash. The perfectly timed salvo ripped into attack ship's kustom void shields, savagely stripping layer after layer of protection, and finally pummeled the defenseless ship into little more than scrap. From far away, the rogue trader ship's auguries chimed as deeply embedded shells exploded, ripping the inner core of the escort and blasting it apart.

A great cheer rose up at the sight of the dying ship. The command crew reveling in the destruction they had wrought. Better still, casualties had been low, very low. There had been no hull breach and only a few structural issues had resulted from the demanding change of heading the ship had endured. They had even avoided the worst case scenario, a boarding by blood thirsty orks.

Taking its time, the imperial frigate turned about and settled at an easy distance from the stricken kill kroozer. Firing from behind them, the remainder of the ork ship detonated with the brilliance of a new star. For all its brutal armament, it had been as defenseless as a new born. Speed, grace, and firepower always carried the day in Sigismund's mind. And his ship possessed all three in admirable quantity. Their victory had been swift and decisive, but also short lived.

Without warning the void shields ignited again and the warship shook as an unknown foe sought to avenge its kin. Overloaded power lines burst as the bridge was filled with smoke and electrical fires. Officers scrambled in confusion, attempting to control the fires that risked roasting them alive. Only the lobotomized servitors carried on, their once human components bridging the data gulf between the cogitators they were slaved to and the masters which needed it.

"Johnston, whose firing on us?" Sigismund yelled. At his console, the master of etherics examined his readings, six of his juniors operating the many auspex system at their disposal.

"An orbital platform my lord. It was unpowered until now, we couldn't detect it. It has just traverse the planet's curvature and acquired us with its firing solution, I have it now."

A hollowed asteroid came into view, magnified on the viewing port. It was a dense, craggy rok bristling with weapons, a typical orkish construct. Sigismund called to the master of ordinance.

"Bargest, what do we have that can hurt it?"

"Little my lord." The Lieutenant sighed, "Torpedoes will detonate before penetrating deep enough and our batteries are far too inaccurate to strip it of its cannons. Only a boarding action could be of any use to us."

"By the throne!" swore Sigismund. "Deploy the counter measures, Bargest. Ito, get us into boarding range, evasive manoeuvers!"

"Like a leaf on the wind my lord," Ito pulled on the ship's wheel and altered their course. Ancillary modules nestled along the ship's length propelled themselves into the gaseous void, screeching interference and wreaking havoc with target acquisition systems.

"Eloquell, get me Keever!" Sigismund sunk in his command throne. It was out of his hands now. When caught unaware, the skill of the crew counter for more than any order the captain could give. There were simply too many variables to address and the time it took for them to reach the captain's ear was long enough to doom a ship and crew. He had to trust in their training. His command lectern lit with an incoming vox signal.

"Your command my lord," came Keever's growling voice.

"Get the storm troopers ready at the teleportarium. I have a job for them." If the _Semper Fidelis_ had any hopes of getting out of this in one piece, it would need the precision and speed of the storm troopers sworn to its service. Using the teleportarium in the midst of evasive maneuvers was risky, and some of them would undoubtedly die in the attempt, but they were willing and able. Oftentimes it took the bravery of a few to save the lives of thousands. Sigismund knew the weight of his decision. Their deaths would be on his conscience. He would never forget, too many lords were callous to the death toll their orders wrought. Not him, not Sigismund Lucius, he led from the front.

The world of sergeant Barr became a roiling tempus as his body was torn apart and thrown into the warp. The gibbering whispers of untold evil clawed at his disembodied mind for the fraction of a second it took for him to return to the material plane. Then, he fell head first. He smashed against the raw stone of his destination, jagged edges digging into his sides. The disorientation he had train to resist slowly subsided as the scream of his dying men echoed around him.

His unit had materialized in transit, men thrown about in disorderly fashion before gravity took its due. Snortling masses of malformed flesh was the first sight his addled mind could discern. The very same that now swarmed around him and his unit of storm troopers. His instincts kicked in before he could be devoured, lashing out with his fractal knife to slice at the stunted hostile was chewed on his pauldron. Quickly lifting his hellgun, he shot another drooling maw inches from his helmet's face plate.

The boarding party he was leading had somehow teleported into the squig pens the orks used as livestock. All around him, trained killers fought off the meter high creatures with lasfire and sheer instinct. Barr managed to get himself to his feet and blazed away at the toothy orkoids. Seconds had passed since their insertion and already he knew the misfortune of his unit would claim more than its fair share of troopers. With clinical precision he aimed and fired at the squigs around him, the powerful hellguns making short work of them and filling the air with the smell of charred flesh.

"Sound off!" Barr ordered in his helm vox. The troopers were outfitted with sealed carapace armor and a wide variety of killing implements. All of which had been put to good use in this frakked insertion. One by one, the survivors of his unit called out. A quick look through his low-light visor was all he needed to find those who hadn't. Firgal was fused to the rock wall, Thimus was dying painfully, his torso welded to a pen gate, and what he believed was Malador, Yule, and Gallion were in pieces on the straw matted deck.

They were only fifteen troopers left, well within combat effective parameters. "The objective remains attainable. We move out!" Storm troopers were the best of the best, barring the Emperor's own space marines. Raised and trained in the Ecclesiarchy run schola progenium, they had the will, the faith, and the firepower to undertake the most crucial and often suicidal missions given to them. This particular company had been seconded to the Lucius dynasty for its service in flattening Krista Quinto, a heretic world. The troopers knew there was more to it, but they hadn't been trained to ask questions. They had been trained to kill.

They put those skills to the test as they navigated the lightless corridors of the ork rok. Some might have described the haphazard tunnels as a rat maze, but they would have been wrong. Orks didn't possess the rational minds required to craft such a pattern. It was all twisted and dead-end tunnels. The twists and turns didn't slow the assault team down however. They moved with a confidence and purpose that revealed a clear intent, lighting up the orks and gretchin swarming in the darkness.

The orks might have had good night vision, but it paled in comparison to the performance of the storm trooper's photovisors. Again and again the orks rallied to crush the rapidly moving assault team but they couldn't keep their enemy contained. The storm troopers collapsed tunnels after tunnels with their melta charges, liquefying the rock until the natural structure folded onto itself, denying the massing greenskins at every turn. Theirs was a text book blitzkrieg but even the efficiency they were renowned for had its limits. Eventually, the orks caught the troopers in a vice.

Barr was taking cover behind a row of stalagmite as his unit laid down suppressive fire. There were three points of ingress into their little hollow. Frag grenades flew into the corridors, shredding ork flesh and channeling the destructive force of the explosion further down the tight tunnels. All around him, the stone was slowly being chipped away by torrents of wanton fire. Barr ignored it with singular focus, crouched over his arm mounted auspex, the fault line was just below them, a meager fifteen meters.

"Volts!" the sergeant voxed the unit's grenadier. "I need two melta charges right here!" Barr pushed himself up and quickly switched position with the grenadier. Volts set the explosives in their midst without argument, even though a stray round could vaporize them at any moment.

"Troopers, take cover! Grappling lines to the ready, on my signal, ascend as far as you can!"

The auspex put the hollow's ceiling at about nineteen meters, barely out of the melta radius. The sergeant clipped his ascension line into the motorized spooler attached to his harness and fired his anchor into the looming ceiling above. The alternative was giving up their position and charging orks at close quarters. Barr would rather take his chances with the meltas. As soon as Volts gave the thumbs up, Barr ordered the ascension.

The orks took the diminishing rate of fire as their opportunity to crush the humies, and with a resounding war cry charged the stalagmites the troopers had been hidden behind. Much to their displeasure, all they saw was boots disappearing up into the darkened recess of the natural grotto. Large caliber rounds chased the troopers as they ascended, a few troopers falling limp on their lines as they were hit by kill shots. Atop their lines the storm troopers returned fire. Theirs was far more accurate and large brutes crumbled under their fury. Ork armor was little more than heavy metal plates strapped together into some kind of form fitting garment. Few of them even bothered with it. The hellguns sliced through them and charred the thick corded flesh beneath.

One unusually curious ork stopped firing his slugga as he noticed the large canisters at his feet. He bent down to grab them when sergeant Barr's precision shot ruptured their content. The room filled with actinic light as the meltas detonated, filling the room with superheated plasma. Barr's photovisor barely had time to darken before the light erupted. He blinked the stars from his sight slowly before noticing with grim satisfaction the mounds of blackened greenskins strewn across the chamber. Below them, a large smoldering crater led down to the cavern beneath, glowing vividly at its edges.

"Descend and secure the fissure boys, I want this mission over with!" Barr watched as his assault team rapidly released their lines and disappeared down their makeshift egress point. Trooper Hua, a few meters away was looking at Barr's direction.

"Sarge, I ah… got a little problem here." Hua's voice was far too calm for what Barr considered a bit more than a 'little' problem. His legs ended a few inches below the knees, vaporized by the melta blast. The heat had cauterized the wounds perfectly, in addition to severing the limbs painlessly.

"Well gak me Hue, at least you won't bleed to death…" sighed Barr.

The trooper chuckled softly before going limp, shock overtaking his body. If they were lucky enough to be teleported out before the ork magazine blew them all to the Emperor's side, Barr made a mental note to have a talk with the idiot that ran this donkey show. That is, if the maniac hadn't died already. The idiot had elected to distract the orks in their chow hall, the place guaranteed to hold the hungriest hostiles on this rok. And the hungriest were always the biggest.

The soldiers knew the importance of their objective as they crawled along the devastated coast of the erstwhile crystal shores. They had paddles their makeshift rafts all night to reach the shore under the cover of darkness. This mission, the latest in a long line of suicidal operations, was the only thing that stood between them and the death of those precious few souls who had survived this long.

They quickly dragged their rafts into the sparse covers of the beach's dying vegetation and moved on. They were filthy bearded wretches wearing the memory of once proud uniforms. Starved, mad eyed men clutching desperately maintained weapons of war. They hailed from Ranok, Persephony, and Galva. Once, some of them had even come from Pangea, but those fierce souls had long ago given their lives so that these survivors could continue to wage war upon the hated xeno.

The rag tag force now inched meter by meter to the once stately headquarters where their war had once been directed. This had been during another life. Where they had ridden powerful chimeras blessed by the priests of mars. Where they had rained death unending on their enemies from mighty basilisks. Where they had fired upon their foes with the bite of thousands of lasguns. Where they had taken to the skies on winged Valkyries.

Now, they ate little more than dirt, killed with rusted knives, hid from foes unending, and took to the skies only once the Emperor beckoned them. What little firepower they once possessed was gripped tight in these soldiers' hands. Focal lenses wrapped in cloth to protect them from the grit that blunted them. Laspacks charged painstakingly with the heat of hidden fire pits. Armors long ago fallen to pieces due to ware and the numerous skirmishes with the enemy.

These were the last of the Emperor's imperial guard on Kursk. A million had become a thousand, then hundreds, and now dozens. The fate of even those few now rested in the hands of these six soldiers. The skies had been lit with fiery tongues. Debris the likes of which had not been seen in years were disintegrating in Kursk's atmosphere. A void battle was taking place somewhere in the heavens. Hope, so brittle and abused of, reared its head and begged to be heard. Had the Imperium returned? Why now, after these long years? More likely the battle was a passing engagement and if so, the imperial ships would soon leave. These men would then wither and die away, forgotten.

That is, unless the survivors could let them know they existed. Hope rested upon the starved shoulders of these few soldiers who could still fight. On the few who could reach the headquarters at crystal shores and operate the ground-to-orbit vox transmitter. A cry for help. A cry of hope. A cry for war.

The orks had plundered every single inch of the human held peninsula years ago. But they did not take what they could not use. It was possible the transmission tower would still stand. It would be bereft of anything capable of sending a signal, but it would hopefully stand. The last functional company vox set was strapped to one of the soldiers back. All they needed was to reach the tower controls in the subterranean bunker.

The fire of hope flickered dangerously when the soldiers finally crawled off the beach. Bonfires were lit across the perimeter of the HQ. Gretchin wandered about while the heftier greenskins slept off the worst of their promethium brew's effect. It was a disorganized mob, but it was resistance, and the soldiers could ill afford it. Worried glances spread across the soldiers. Their ruddy face had long been creased with the ochre dust of Kursk, eyes blood shot and beard streaked with reddish strands. Still, a vivid flame burned in their eyes. It said: salvation, or death.

The ragtag force unlimbered cruel makeshift knives and shivs, agreed wordlessly, and began to approach the HQ. They had learned stealth and survival from the Galvan scouts, fortification and demolition from the Ranok engineers, relentless assault from the Pangean death-worlders, and used it all with the speed of the Persephonian light cavalry. They bore the memories of all those worlds, and struck with vengeance for all those who had fallen away from home.

Like shadows they materialized between the bonfires and set to work. Gretchin panicked as they were eviscerated, rent in twine, or stabbed repetitively. Their shrieks and cries muffled by shredded cloaks or loose rags. A ragged snort erupted from a waking ork deemed unworthy of sleeping indoors. He looked about sleepily and cursed as he noticed an unsurprising lack of sentries. Hawking a slimy glob of mucous he rolled over and went back sleep, still painfully intoxicated. The ork grumbled, dreaming of the punishment he would visit on the puny grots.

From discarded rubbish piles, crouched behind roaring bonfires, or stepping out of shadowy recesses, the soldiers appeared once more and quickly entered the once stately HQ. Broken windows and unsecured doors all that stood in their way. The sentries had failed, no shot had been fired, and they were closer to their objective than ever.

They flitted through the corridors, cloth wrapped feet silent against the once pristine marble flooring. They were half way to the bunker lift when the sun crested the horizon and woke an ork task master, who now roared for the day to begin. The soldiers disappeared behind fluted columns, shredded banners, and ravaged furniture. The orks had not yet woken fully and thrashed about without noticing the humans in their midst, but it was only a matter of time. A grimy Ranok brute gripped his lasgun tightly and exchanged glances with his compatriot.

Pangean doctrine came to him as if he had been born one of the death worlders. Strike fast, create confusion, stay mobile, and wake to the great warrior's side. The soldier's leader shook his head slowly. He had lost too many friends already, they would live or die together. The Ranok disagreed and snapped his cognomen tags from his neck, with the flick of his wrist they landed in the leader's dirty hands.

With a mighty roar the soldier darted from his hiding place and blazed away at the slumbering giants. He ripped the last of his grenades from his harness and threw it in a packed room before firing his las gun dry into another. In seconds, the orks were up and chasing him, moving away from his comrades. The worn soldiers spared him no further thought. His sacrifice would be used to take the objective. They would mourn his valiant soul only if they had the luxury of surviving.

They rapidly formed behind each other, a sinuous line of hunched soldiers covering one another as they passed room after room. Well placed shots silenced curious gretchin or blinded roaring orks. The enemy knew they were here now, they had to move more rapidly than stealth allowed, but they could still slow the enemy's response by creating more pressing concerns.

A wiry Galvan split from the group once he saw a stockpile room filled with crude promethium and ammo crates. The orks were not known for their safety procedures, they would often simply pile their supplies up in the most convenient of places. It made for spectacular diversions. With a few quick shots the room exploded into a fiery blaze. The Galvan barely made it out before the torrential blaze spread out into the corridors. That would buy them some time.

The persephonians were holding the corridor which held the lift. While their rear had been secured, the front still needed tending to. Their leader was waving the vox man down the lift shaft when the firing started. The wiry Galvan darted for cover as the corridor filled with large caliber rounds. He crumbled lifelessly, his headless body smashing against the priceless bust of their former commander. Their leader spared his fallen comrade a glance, spitting when he saw the noble features of their hated general staring back at him in a pool of the Galvan's blood.

The three remaining Persephonians worked together to knock the orks to the ground with their coordinated las fire. They barely managed to slow the enemy assault. In seconds, more of them would mass and no amount of las fire the soldiers could muster would hold them back.

Their leader called them over to the line that was hooked in the lift's shaft for a quick descent. He covered them as fire ripped at his surroundings, pulverizing stone and wood. His men followed his command immediately, he had earn their trust a long time ago. They descended into the dark shaft as quickly as they were able to. The roar of frenzied orks followed the soldiers' leader down as he crashed into the rumble at the shaft's bottom. His brothers-in-arms quickly dragged him out and pulled him aside as the last of their demolition charges was used to collapse the shaft into rubble. As the dust blew into the confines of the abandoned command bunker, the soldiers stab lights panned the darkness for enemies. They coughed as the dust crept into their tired lungs. Years of Kursk's fine particulates had already claimed many of their fellows. At times like these, breathing often felt like razors slicing through their chest. It didn't stop the most feral of their numbers from glaring wolfishly at the carnage they had wrought.

The precious moments they had bought themselves by collapsing the shaft we used getting the coughing under control and getting a bearing of the room. It had been a very long time since their leader had been here. The memory pained him to this day. They found what they had been looking for, the vox station. They set to work, slicing wires and struggling to remember forgotten prayers to the machine spirit. They would need the Omnissiah's blessing now, so it paid to remember the litanies. While the men worked, their leader skirted the edges of the bunker, hands brushing against the walls until he found the emergency power supply. With closed eyes and a prayer on his lips, he flipped the lever. A soft hum thrummed across the room but died moments after a shower of sparks fell from the ceiling. Then, slowly, a few lumen strips came to life and the humming grew strong again. The soldiers looked around the bunker, faces that had forgotten to smile slowly remembering. They shared no words between them, they didn't need to. Everything they had needed to share had already been said long ago. Quickly, they finished their work.

They gathered around the vox console and parted as the man they had come to trust with their lives flipped a few switches. He looked across the console unsure. Nothing happened. The vox man crept closer and fiddled with a few of the switches until finally the blessed sound of static filled the room. An echo of the once handsome man's mirthful grin showing through the filth on his face. Their leader picked up the vox horn and turned all the dials to their maximum output. Every channel. Every wave. Everywhere.

With wavering fingers and tears to his eyes he pressed the transmission stud. He began to speak but choked on his words. A waif of a man, the soldier with the wandering eye, padded his back reassuringly. Hope would live or die within the span of the next few moments. It was almost unbearable.

"This is Augustus Trevin… Veteran sergeant of the Persephonian 1st mechanized infantry regiment, 3rd Company, Misfit squad. If there is anyone out there. Please, for throne's sake, please respond." The static returned as he depressed the stud. A blanket of empty noise washing over the silent room. The dying power reserve was slowly petering off.

"To any imperial ship orbiting Kursk. We are in need of help. A camp of loyalist still fight the orks. We are still alive. This is the only transmission we will be able to broad cast. Please, in the name of the Emperor, is _ANYONE_ out there?"

The lumen strips above them died one after the other. They were trapped beneath the HQ and the air would soon run out. They had hours at best. Was this going to be how their struggle ended, or would the orks get in before their lungs gave out?

The signal had been strong. The tower was still functional. The vox caster at their feet was communing as it should. Still, nothing but cold dead static met them, and even that died moments later. And hope, it seemed, had finally died with it.

Sigismund was no stranger to constraining timetables, but this was verging on the ridiculous. The battle in orbit had lasted little more than an hour and the storm troopers had cleared the static weapons platform in record time. Sigismund had teleported straight in the middle of an ork feast armed with little more than his ancestral wargear, a legatus pattern power armor, and the support of a handful of heavy flamer wielding armsmen. With the knightly Keever watching his back, the diversionary attack had been all too successful, drawing a veritable horde of heavily armed nobs. They had held out long enough to roast half the orks on the platform, though it had cost him most of his squad.

Meanwhile, Eloquell had managed to receive a dying vox signal from the surface. It had died moments after its initial broadcast. By a stroke of luck, the man they had come to save had sent it but its point of origin was swarming with orks. The auspex sweep of the surface had been grim. _Everything,_ was crawling with orks. Sigismund had less than an hour to get the soldiers out before their position, and his in orbit, was overtaken by ork reinforcement.

Every available lighter had been scrambled to descend to the surface. Half were packed with armsmen, a full company's worth, the others were held in reserve to ferry the marooned guardsmen. Still, the prospect of a successful rescue mission were slim.

They arrived on wings of fire and death, unloading into the jaws of waiting xenos. Luckily the abandoned imperial HQ only held a handful of orks, and they had become complacent without a worthy foe. They were cut down with only a few casualties to Sigismund's forces. It had been a brutal exchange of shotgun and shoota slugs, and the captain had dispatched the ork Mek Boy that lead them with the help of his powered gladius and masterwork storm bolter. The problem had not been the landing, but rather the retrieval.

It had taken time, too much of the precious commodity, to find the four soldiers buried deep within the HQ's bowels. The starved bastards had even put up a fight before realizing their rescuers weren't orks. Now, Sigismund's land forces were returning to their transport with a cloud of orkish transport barreling towards them from the horizon. An unhappy pilot, Levi Toth himself, Sigismund realized, glared at the captain from his seat in the cock pit as he helped the wounded Trevin unto his shuttle.

"We can't leave," gasped the weakened guardsmen as Sigismund strapped him to his seat.

"We can, and we will, trooper." The captain waved at Toth to take off. The brisk lift off nearly flooring the unseated Sigismund. It seemed Toth was still angry at him.

"There are more of us by the northern shore. The caverns in the mountains, we need to get to the camp." The sergeant might have been starved, but he was not beaten. The steel of his resolve struck Sigismund. The dirt encrusted guardsmen white knuckled his grav harness, remaining conscious by sheer dint of will. Sigismund couldn't help but respect that.

"In less than…" The captain looked at his chrono for added effect, "twenty-five minutes standard, a considerable force or ork ships will crowd the orbit of this miserable planet. This will force my ship to break off and abandon us. Do you want to be marooned here for another decade?"

The soldier's iron will chipped at the thought. Had it truly been a decade since that fateful day? Could he find it in himself to live one more day on this hellish world?

"We live or die together…" Trevin insisted and the cold fire that crept into the soldier's eyes told Sigismund all he needed to know.

"I'm going to kill him" hissed Evangeline as she dug her nails into the command throne's arms.

Sigismund was running late. The _Semper Fidelis_ had remained around Kursk for as long as it could. Then, a pack of Ork attack ships had forced it to power off. Lagging behind them was another kill kroozer, easily three times the size of the warship itself. This was a fight they couldn't win. Not unless they took reckless risks. Still, she couldn't very well leave her half-brother on an ork infested world. Though he made the prospect terribly tempting.

They needed to buy some time. "Master of Ordinance, what is the count on our torpedoes?" Bargest confirmed the query with his subordinates.

"Two in breach, and two on stand-by commander." The Falcion class' voss pattern launcher was half the standard size. It was only meant to add some firepower to the frigate, not take on entire fleets. Still, it could be used to good effect.

"Master of the Helm, get that planet between us and those attack ship," Ordered Evangeline. With a floury acknowledgement, the _Semper Fidelis_ headed on its new course. That would buy Sigismund twenty minutes at best. "I want those warheads primed and ready for a wide spread when we come about Kursk." The master of ordinance confirmed the order.

Only a year into her position and she was already having to command the _Semper Fidelis_ in combat. This was not only unacceptable, it was terrifying. She had no combat experience, no years of void faring to base her decision on. She was struggling not to show her panic, to ignore the sweat beading on her brow, or the urge to continuously re arrange her long navy coat's sleeves. Sigismund had left her in command while he irresponsibly meddled in everyone else's job. The bosuns' pacification of the riot, the storm troopers' rok assault, and now the pilots' rescue run. Why couldn't he sit still and captain his own damn ship!

"Is everything alright commander?" Sola asked as she appeared at the young officer's side. Evangeline had unwittingly let out a whimper, trust the vice factotum to be there to see it. The woman bunked unusually close to the captain's quarters, and had no reason to be on the bridge, but Sigismund has allowed the habit, and so there was no stopping her now. Still, her presence was often soothing. It certainly had curbed the captain's enthusiasm on a number of occasion.

"Everything is under control!" the commander said unconvincingly.

"Of course it is Evangeline. You have a fine ship, an outstanding crew, and the support of those who matter." Sola gave the young woman a reassuring wink.

Evangeline forced a smile. Sola Villaneuva was right. All she needed to do is not give ridiculous orders. Something her half-brother usually got away with, but only because they proved the right decision in the end. Sigismund wasn't half has stupid as he looked, Evangeline realized.

"What would Sigismund do?" asked the commander to herself.

"Probably charge boldly into the enemy guns blazing," kidded Sola.

"Of course, you're right!" Evangeline jumped from her seat and studied the command lectern. She deftly summoned the required information from the augury, navigation, and enginarium sections. She turned to the master of the vox, "Mistress Eloquell, the crew is at general quarters, are they not?"

"Aye, aye commander." The master of the vox answered puzzled.

"Evangeline, darling… what are you doing?" Sola stepped up to the command lectern protectively. She seemed much more concerned then she had been moments ago.

"I'm doing what Sigismund would have done!" the commander grinned wickedly. As if warned by instincts honed by years of service under Sigismund, the command crew slowly turned to the command station, and a visibly blanching vice factotum.

It had taken more than an hour. The sick, the wounded, and the dying, no one was left behind. No one would ever be left behind again. The lighters had been filled to the brink. Even the furious Toth had stepped form his beloved shuttled and ferried the skeletal survivors to its safety. The survivors had cried, praised the Emperor, and dragged what little they owned with them. Momentos of lost loved ones, lucky bolt shells, gnarled lasguns, prized tools, even the scoured and sanctified skulls of their venerated commanders. These were people who had clung to their Imperium even after being abandoned by it. These, were heroes.

Sigismund argued with a young woman on the shuttle's ship to ship vox set. It seemed his ship was under attack, and the women vehemently insisted he leave the surface. The captain would not relent. Trevin stood silently behind him as the man closed the signal on the shrieking woman.

"Oh, sergeant, I didn't hear you there." The captain straightened up and rested his hands on his hips. Gus had seen the likes a thousand times before. He himself had practiced it in the looking glass of his noble estate, so long ago. The captain wore it well, genuinely even. The indomitable spirit of the imperium made manifest.

"It's been useful around here, not being heard." Trevin tried to smile, it came off as a crooked sneer. "Why are you putting your people in danger? It's been…" the sergeant looked at his dirty wrist where a chrono might have sat, "more than twenty-five minutes standard."

Sigismund chuckled honestly, his warm smile making Gus immediately comfortable in his presence. "Birds of a feather Trevin, that's what we are." With a sweep of a grit stained sleeve, the captain invited Trevin to sit down. His richly appointed coat and tricorn suffering visibly in the dusty wasteland of Kursk. Trevin took a seat.

"I respect you and what you stand for. I believe you're worth it. You're a man who has walked a thousand miles through hell. When asked to do it again, you were willing to do so for the sake of your friends. That kind of spirit merits assistance, and it tells me one of two things."

"That I'm insane?" suggested the worn sergeant.

Sigismund smiled. "That's always a possibility, but I have seen plenty of insanity in my life time. I like to believe I can tell the difference. No, it tells me that either you are a person of immeasurable character, or that your friends are. The emperor smiles when the situation involves both."

The shaggy sergeant nodded softly, unsure of what the rogue trader was getting at.

"Why do you think I am here, on Kursk?" offered Sigismund.

"I would wager luck? Perhaps an imperial navy contract? I heard your kind like to tempt fate. Did they pay you well?"

"Luck, money, and a propensity to test fate are certainly part of why I am here. More importantly, Augustus Trevin of Persephonia, I am here because someone believed you were a person of unique character. And I agree with her."

"Her?" asked the curious guardsman.

"Lady Josephine Della. She offered me the entirety of her estate for the retrieval of any and all survivors marooned on this miserable dust ball." Sigismund leaned in conspiratorially, "and between you and me, Trevin, she asked for you by name."

The tired soldier leaned back into his grav-harness as the shuttle ramp closed. The confines were filled with the stench of his fellow survivors. Their rescue had not quite sunk in yet and numbness was slowly creeping into his system. Like many here, he let himself dream of hope once again, but not just of survival. He hoped for a reunion that promised answers to questions which boggled his mind. The first being, why had his commanding officer intervened at such high personal cost? And what could it mean?

Beside Trevin, Sigismund turned his mind to more pressing concerns. The _Semper Fidelis_ was running circles around the planet, fending off the ork reinforcements and taking heavy fire. He would have to somehow get his lighters to dock without leaving his ship vulnerable to concerted attack. Face down his furious half-sister who, in an uncharacteristically candid moment, promised to do unseemly things to his corpse. Then, fire up the auxiliary plasma banks to give his ship the extra thrust it needed to escape the hostile ships circling it. Under normal conditions firing up the auxiliary generators would not have been such a risky task, but the ship had taken a few hits and the plasma banks were as likely to explode as give them the edge they needed. Finally, he would need a way out of the system. Their initial augury sweeps, in addition to their warp transit, had no doubt attracted a horde of ork ships to the galactic east, which left them with only one option. They would have to brave the Beholder's mysterious nature, the only ork free space in the system, if they had any chance of escaping their pursuers.

The _Semper Fidelis_ was limping along. At this rate, the Della family fortune would barely be enough to pay for the months it would take to dry dock the warship and affect its much needed repairs. Not to mention the amount of ordinance they had flung at the orks, yet another well documented cost Sigismund would have to account for. Sola had made it painfully clear in the many paged volume she called a fiscal repot. The cost in human life had been the last nail in the coffin, and the one Sigismund care the most about. This endeavor would be considered a miserable failure in the eyes of the dynasty senatorum. That is, if they ever made it back to the flotilla to submit their report. There was still half of dozen ork ships of all shapes and sizes sniffing at their reactor's radiation trail. Foot prints in the void mused Sigismund.

Surprisingly, Evangeline had performed admirably given her situation. Taking a page out of his book, she had used Kursk's orbit to sling shot her way towards the unprepared ork attack ships. With full thrust and lucky shots, she had barged through their line, destroying one with plasma warheads and trusting the ship's shields to hold up against the enemy's barrages. She had crippled the two remaining attack ships by slicing between them and unleashing all of the _Semper Fidelis_'s wrath at once. Then, easily outmaneuvering them, she had pressed on and used the last of their torpedo load against the kill kroozer. Forced out of its heading to avoid the lethal payload, the ship had swung out of firing range and allowed the imperial warship enough time to reach the pickup coordinates. The lighter pilots had matched speed and dock with admirable skill. Toth especially, had managed to land without crashing in the hangers. It had all been brilliant, despite incurring several hull breaches and venting out nearly a third of the crew to their deaths, in addition to crippling the port side battery and damaging several vital systems.

Steward Herbert had managed to compile an approximate viability report. The _Semper Fidelis_ barely had two months' worth of breathable gases, drinkable water, and foodstuff. A figure only possible in conjunction with the devastating attrition of the crew. So far from safe harbor, and far too deep in the Kursk system to safely jump to warp without ripping the ship in half, a slow agonizing death was the most probable outcome. One the crew at large had no real idea of, thanks to the skillful propaganda campaign by Eloquell and her people.

And so the _Semper Fidelis_ limped on towards the mysterious xeno construct that centuries of void tales had characterized ascertain doom. Now that half the system was alerted to the imperial warship's existence, it seemed reasonable to use the long distance auspex to get an idea of what the Beholder was. Only rudimentary readings were obtained. The perfectly spherical planetoid was surrounded by eight equally unlikely satellites. They circled around at perfectly equidistant intervals, and swallowed most kind of augury probes sent their way. A mystery in every sense. Whatever horrors the alien minds which had conceived it reserved for the rogue trader and his crew, only time would tell. It held the promise of an uncertain fate, whose alternative was all too knowable and bloody. Either way, it was death at xeno hands.

Sigismund had run out of time. Every day the causalities from the auxiliary plasma bank section rose, the over worked system failing in catastrophic gouts of superheated gas. The Enginseer Primaris, Scartus, had already warned the captain that the strain was jeopardizing the main drive reactor. It was only a matter of time before the magos considered Sigismund's demands a heresy to the machine-spirit and came up from the bowels of the ship to take the captain's head. To the Adeptus Mechanicus, a void ship in its entirety, let alone the reactor it housed, was sacrosanct. They lived to serve and tend its colossal heart. Scartus had once already made good on his threats some 200 years ago, decapitating a great-grand-uncle with his servo arm. It seemed that venerable tech-priests were more valuable than incompetent family relations, for the enginseer had never been punished. A sobering reminder of a captain's limits, of lines drawn in the sand.

Sigismund prayed the ship would reach the Beholder, before he had to test those lines.


	3. Chapter 3

Into the Breach; final part

Some information was too sensitive to divulge. Even if Sigismund trusted his command staff implicitly, it would complicate their duties tremendously to silence every dissenting voice they encountered. No, the state of affairs required a lighter touch, the kind the inner circle had. Twenty-seven hours ago the _Semper Fidelis_ had finally broken free of its pursuers. Despite the masterful skill of its crew, credit went to the Beholder. The orks knew better than to enter the space around it and the _Semper Fidelis_ had soon found why. The ship now floated inexorably towards the spherical planetoid powerlessly. Seconds after the fifty thousand kilometer mark, a dissonant frequency had disturbed the harmonics of the exhausted drive reactor. Through a miracle of the Omnissiah, Scartus had managed to enact a successful rite of slumber and lulled the fissuring reactor. But a slumbering core also brought about a slumbering ship, its power draining away quicker than the residual charge could maintain it.

Hidden away from prying eyes Sigismund, Sola, Hubert, and Remi met in the captain's dimly lit quarters. As the power needed rationing, all none essential lighting had been curtailed to a strict minimum. Candle light flickered between them on a dining table too large for their use, its rich hand carved curves the only ostentatious display visible in the gloom. The mood was heavy and ponderous, a decisive resolution was required for their continued survival. Summoned with uncharacteristic subtility on the captain's part, Sola had expected something else entirely than what she found.

A shame, for the vice factotum had chosen a dress superbly appointed to heighten her lithe figure, its deep velvet folds hinting teasingly at her body's shapes. Although she knew of the captain's licentious tendencies and harbored no desire to be one of his conquest, she understood the importance of playing ones strengths.

The Nostromo navigator hadn't bothered to alter his garments in the slightest. His every day robes of office were worth a king's ransom, and was in fact permanently overdressed. The lack of illumination deepened the shadows that masked his hooded face to the extent that his robes appeared to be unoccupied. Few would have guessed that the regal display was as armored as a guard issue flak vest, for it had been weaved with crystalline fibers spun by a race of sentient microscopic arachnids. That particular xeno race's continued existence had been tolerated by the Imperium, not unlike certain species of abhumans, or mutants, for that matter. The navigator being a prime example and the transhuman space marines another. The saying 'Thou shall not suffer the alien, the mutant, and the witch to live' prove to be far more flexible a statement than presupposed.

Sigismund's naval uniform seemed remarkably subdued in comparison to his guests. The captain enjoyed putting on airs, but this occasion was not one of them. As the ship steward poured a measure of golden liquor in each of the guests' glass, Sigismund sighed deeply.

"What exactly is this thing?" he finally asked.

Sola accessed her encyclopedic memory, long enhanced by the cerebral cogitator that nestled within her skull. It held an unfathomable depth of knowledge and was usually filled with invaluable information, none of which could answer the captain's question. Instead, she reverted to the ship's choirmaster's report.

"Venerable Potholemus has informed us that we have entered a zone of silence. In his long and loyal career aboard the ship, he has never once encountered such a phenomenon. He claims the voices of his peers do not reach here, and he can similarly not project his own within the grasp of the anomaly."

Remi scoffed. "Never trust a psyker. They are barely more than soothsayer on the best of days, hiding their incompetency behind parables and mysticism." Remi reached for his fluted glass and sipped the expensive amasec, grimacing under his hood at its crude flavor. His palette was used to much finer fare. He set the glass down in a sinuous motion, the fluid gesture disturbing to behold.

"As oppose to how you practice your craft, locked away in your spire?" Said Sigismund.

"You amuse me Sigs," chuckled the Nostromo. "There is a distinct difference between our age old craft and their pathetic attempts at screaming into the warp. We are not followed about by spy-blanker executioners, unlike those supposedly sanctioned telepaths, we are not prone to possession or devilry."

The difference was academic, they all knew. But navigators would rather be caught dead than be compared to warp meddling witches, especially Remi. Sigismund rubbed his brow.

"Then what is your appraisal of the situation?" asked the captain apprehensively.

A slight shift under the cowl was the only sign that Remi had heard the question at all, taking his time before answering. "It is most likely an artificially produced lull in the warp, a diversion of its currents. Though such a thing is beyond imperial technology, its xeno creators undoubtedly managed it. How they managed is puzzling, not to mention very, very interesting."

The guests silently considered the implication of such a feat, and the species that could have managed it. Sola had been born on a forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the teachings of the Omnissiah. Which made her superficially familiar with many of the priesthood of mars' theories about the material universe. Many of which she had explored by herself with the help of pilfered tomes acquired by the dynasty. Purist would have called her a tech-heretic, an unsanctioned holder of ancient technological mysteries reserved to the priesthood, and despite this, she still could not imagine how the warp could be repelled from the material plane on such a scale. This went far beyond the capacity of Gellar shield technology. Hubert coughed politely.

"I remember a time long ago when your father and I had ventured deep into xeno ruins found in the Heathen Stars of the Koronus expanse, a time before you were even born sir. Anthonid was still unwed, having yet to meet your mother, Siggy." The old man smiled nostalgically, forgetting his normally formal conduct. Those had been the days before the schism between him and Anthonid, when they had been like brothers.

Remi chuckled at yet another pet name he could harass Sigismund with, a thought the captain realized as he shot the navigator a murderous glare.

"Anyway, we found these marvelous regenerating crystals. Stranger yet, the crystals were alive. Veritable colonies of the things grew in the ruins, a psychic network of billions. We discovered that with a telepathic nudge, their growth could be directed into any shape you could imagine. Better yet, they would continuously regenerate and survived off ambient radiation, nothing serious mind you, just heat, light, that sort of thing. They were for all intent and purpose, the perfect building material."

Hubert stroked his groomed beard with a gnarled hand. Dragging the silence until Sola couldn't help but urge the conclusion of the mysterious tale. Her curiosity often got the better of her manners. "And?" she asked the steward.

"Ah, well, unfortunately the crystal colonies had a mind of their own, one that care little for our plans. Before a proper mining operation could be establish a hostile vessel attacked the _Son of Ultramar_"

"Wait, a ship? Whose?" The captain piped in. Hubert smiled. He had known the relatively young captain his entire life, he had practically raised the boy after his father had sent him onto the _Semper Fidelis _to learn the craft of command. The boy had barely been five years old. Void battles were still his favorite kind of stories.

"The crystals of course. I told you they were part of a psychic network didn't I? Well, they had fashion a semblance of ship out in the void long before we ever arrived, probably taking to the stars to explore, just as man had. It fired slivers of itself to deadly effect. Once Anthonid had laid the ship to waste with the orbital bombardment cannons of his prow, he reconsidered selling the Imperium a construction material capable of murdering its owners."

The inner circle shared glances, the galaxy was truly a formidable and inhospitable place. A reality far too familiar for Remi. A reality he would rather see robbed of any power it could exert over him.

The Nostromo banished the story with a scoff. "A very fanciful tale steward. Are those the kind of stories you would use to scare Siggy when he misbehaved? Or was this the kind of rubbish that made the man into the fool he is today?"

The ship's steward met the Nostromo's eyes, despite the shadows that hung beneath his hood, the harrowing glare unsettling the mutant. "Banish the thought from your mind young navigator, this was not a tale, but an account. Your posturing is just that, feeble attempts to paint yourself mighty because you fear yourself to be weak. There are creatures in the dark void that would rip your sanity to shred, despite your inherit resilience to the maddening warp. Creatures the likes of which could subjugate the crystal colonies we had found, creatures like the Yu'vath."

Remi disregarded the old man, but couldn't help feeling a flutter in his chest. House Nostromo had been amongst the navigators assisting the Angevine crusades, which had banished the Yu'vath from what would become the Calaxis sector two millennia later. House records remained of the boundless and terrible mastery over the warp that the species had possessed. Enough to know that such mythical creatures had indeed existed. And though they had dragged their entire empire into the warp to disappear forever on the cusp of their defeat, their slave races numbered in the hundreds, each were more terrifying than the last. Some of which still survived to this day.

Sola shook her head. "Calm within the warp, self-replicating crystalline structures, Yu'vath? How does this all fit together?"

Sigismund stood and fetched his brocaded navy coat from his high backed dinning chair. "It is all supposition until we set foot in that construct. Thank you Hubert, your council was invaluable."

Sola quickly stood, smoothing the pleats of her dress in a nervous tell. "You can't possibly want to go there in person Sigs." She feared for the captain's safety but the exhilaration she felt reminded her that perhaps it was her curiosity above all that drove her to say what she did next." Not without me!"

"I intend to Sola. In less than twenty-four hours the atmospheric vitae systems will go unpowered and we will all die. Those left on this boat trust me to do whatever is in my power to safeguard their lives. I don't need to endanger you to do that, I have knuckles after all." Before the captain could storm off, Remi chimed in.

"I suppose I will have to join you on this fool's errand. Sola won't take no for an answer and you would be lost without me. You'd probably run in circles until the Emperor rose from his golden throne. Perhaps with my warp expertise, Sola's penchant for technology, and Knuckles' brute strength, we might succeed."

Sigismund couldn't have asked for fiercer companions. Hopefully, their trust would not be misplaced. Finally, the elderly Hubert painfully pushed himself from his chair.

"Once last thing sir. I believe it's appropriate to mention that a message came to me by way of chief bosun Ribella. It seems that, being denied the means to contact you directly, the imperial guard survivors have offered their services towards the resolution of what ills their swift return home."

"Hardy bastards," smiled the captain. "Invite them to the lighter bay Hubert, I'll join them presently." The odds were looking better by the minute. If Sigismund had been a gambling man, which he had to admit he was, he'd have taken these odds any day. It was time to roll the dice.

Sigismund stood before the men assembled in the lightless lighter bay. He cut a regal figure clad in the light power armor, bestowed to the defender of the dynasty. Its sculpted breastplate was worked into the perfection of the human body. Its braces and grieves mimicking the musculature of the apex warrior, a modest sun tanned cingulum covering the gaps between the breast plate and thigh guards with adamantium studded leather strips. With his helm resting in the crook of his arm, the ancient pattern molded to mimic those worn by the ancient warriors of holy terra itself, he nodded at the soldiers that would soon risk their lives with him.

Ratings had set up enough lumen globes to shed light on the mustering point, and rows of void suited armsmen bearing shotguns and boarding gear now waited their commander's briefing. The captain found the guardsmen easily enough. Although they wore the same protective suits as his soldiers, they projected an air of stoic competence with none of the discipline or ceremony shared by the void born naval crew. None the less, he was thankful for their support. Sigismund hated admitting to himself that the storm trooper company was too valuable an asset to risk in such a risky operation. He consoled himself with the knowledge that whatever these brave men would encounter, he would be at their side, taking the same risks.

With Remi and Sola at his side, both with their own personalized void gear, he began the briefing. "The _Semper Fidelis_ is in her death throes. Her beating heart slowing as we speak. She is stricken and vulnerable, but she is not defenseless. Many of you were born within her halls, you have lived from her bounty and called her home, and if any of you are lucky enough, you will die in her service like your fathers and forefathers have before you. Her decks are sacrosanct, every inch of her is Imperial soil! Her fate is in your hands, will you let the xeno trample upon he decks?"

"Never!" the armsmen roared, punching their fists in the air.

"Will you let her millennia of service end in this miserable system?"

"Never!" they roared again.

"Will you risk life and limb with me to repay her protection, to hear her cannons roar anew, and watch her carve her way through xenos filth, that mankind may rule the stars as is its manifest destiny!"

The armsmen began beating their fists against their chest in a rhythmic tattoo, the lighter bay crew joining in the martial tradition, only the Kursk survivors were unmoved. These traditions were not their own. They originated from a naval life with a history of its own. The ship a nation in its own right. From the cadence of their walk, to the clip speech of their low gothic, and the professions of their daily lives, these people were fundamentally different. Their world an artifice of man, with recycled air and water, illuminated by phosphorous lights, and steel plates beneath their boots. The captain's words was meant for them.

Sigismund raised his hand and silence fell. "Your mission is to infiltrate three of the satellites orbiting the Beholder, designated Alpha, Beta, and Cappa. Ascertain the nature and function of these moons and disable anything that might be the source of the harmonics plaguing our reactor core." The captain began walking along the lines of the assembled armsmen. "The moons are covered in a matrix of crystalline armor. The wrecks floating around the anomaly are ork remnants, we believe the greenskins fell prey to the same problems the_ Semper Fidelis_ is experiencing and attempted to destroy the moons. They breached the crystalline surface but failed to free themselves of the Beholder's grasp. These are the entry points your pilots will use to get you aboard." Taking a deep breath, Sigismund eyed the men within their sealed void carapaces.

"We have reason to believe these crystalline shells are self-repairing, that leaves us with a small window of opportunity. Additionally, radiation seem to be venting from the damaged moons so I expect anyone with a suit breach to return to their shuttle. You won't survive more than a few minutes I'm told." Sola nodded to Sigismund as he confirmed her appraisal. "There is no need for heroics." Sigismund flashed a confident smile, "that, you can leave that to me."

The armsmen received the jest well, chuckling at their captain's reputation.

"The radiation will also play havoc on your vox range, so relay any reports to your shuttles and they will forward them to mistress Eloquell." The captain stopped and gave them an approving nod. "Now, if you're all done watching me prance about, mount up!"

The boarding teams filed out, grabbing their equipment on the way towards their shuttles. With a passing salute, the Kursk survivors went their own way. Sigismund returned a thankful nod and waited for everyone to be within their transport before approaching his own. Sola and Remi were patiently standing on the boarding ramp as their support settled into their grav couches.

Sigismund clamped his helmet into the suits atmospheric seals and opened an internal vox channel. "You can come out now Knuckles." From one of the many entrances onto the embarkation deck, a large shaped shambled out. The ork had insisted he make his own void suit, as none could contain his bulk. It was little more than industrial overalls with led slabs bolted into the substructure hidden beneath its material. Upgraded with jagged sharps of steel and plastered in strange orkish glyphs, it boasted a large plasteel bowl atop its armored collar. Breathable gases were pumped into the suit by ribbed tubing coming out of a repurposed heavy flamer tank. Dials and valves were stitched crudely across the orks void suit, their use suspicious devoid of purpose, but Knuckles confidently boasted it would 'get thingz dun.'

"Whyz I gotta wait outside, huh?" grumbled the bulky greenskin in his home made vox thief. How any of his equipment worked was a mystery, one Knuckles kept jealously hidden.

"I told you why, Knuckles. Our guests are not likely fond of orks and they graciously offered to help. It's the least we could do," said Sigismund. "Now mount up and try not to gouge anyone's suit while you settle in, okay?"

The ork's head bobbed in his bulbous void helmet as he thundered past the captain. The Nostromo affected an air of disgust as Knuckles barged passed him. It was one he often wore, so Sigismund thought nothing of it. As the captain boarded behind Remi, Sola squeezed his arm, the click of her vox channel following a second later.

"No heroics, Sigs. Seriously. I brought enough equipment to find the source of the anomaly but we don't know what to expect. I doubt the orks stopped trying after they pummeled the moons, they must have boarded the satellites too but something stopped them. And they are far more resilient than we are."

The captain's feature were hidden behind his visor, unlike Sola's transparent vision shield, but his voice was soothing, if a little dismissive. "I wouldn't do anything to endanger you Sola. You know that."

"It's not me I'm worried about Sigs. Promise me," Sola frowned.

Sigismund nodded and took her gloved hand in his armored gauntlet. The artifice of his wargear was such that he could squeeze her hand tenderly, despite the ceramite between them. Without wasting another word the captain made his way up to the cock pit, stowing his weapons securely.

"I curse the day I met you captain," greeted Levi Toth. Sigismund sat in the co-pilot's chair and chuckled through his external vocalizer.

"Give it time Toth, you'll find more than just that to curse me with." Signal strips were flashing on the outside of the shuttle, the lighter crew directing the shuttle taxis to their appointed take off position. The darkness beyond the lighter port was so deep that without the carefully rationed guiding strips a pilot was likely to collide against the boundaries of the embarkation deck before he ever made it out.

"None the less captain, I particularly despise you at the moment. I went from earning a decent livelihood in relative safety to one in an ork infested star system. In the short time since you forced me into your service I have already lived through a void riot and a void engagement. And now I'm preparing to land blindly into the lion's den with Emperor-knows-what in it. That's if I can get my instruments to function with all this damnable electromagnetic interference out there."

"Just like Fistae Munda's low orbit," chided the captain.

"No! It's nothing like Fista Munda." Toth complained wretchedly as he powered the forward thrust. The shuttle was slowly picking up speed as it blazed a trail from the lock harness and the thruster plates that allowed shuttles to take off in the relatively small bay. "Well, maybe a bit," the pilot admitted as he cleared the lighter port and began to turn into his heading. His instruments wobbled and danced, making no sense of direction, speed, or relative distance. The pilot sighed as Sigismund turned them off.

"Huh-huh" taunted the captain playfully.

"Fine… it's just like it." Despite having to fly blind, Toth intuitively piloted old Barnabus, easily, reacting to its well know tells. The barely audible rattling of the chassis, the stiff right maneuvering thruster, the pull in the seat of his stomach. It all made sense to Levi.

"I still hate you," muttered the surly pilot.

The short flight had tested Levi's skills. He had chased his target moon amidst wildly fluctuating gravity wells. The size of the planetoid and its revolving satellites exerted much more pull than they should have, and flying between them had clawed at his shuttle violently. With their auspex down, Levi had took his shuttle around the moon a few times to find the crater that had been blown out of its crystal shell. The landing had been another matter entirely. Synchronizing his speed with the movement of the satellite, he had manage to set down within a gouged out cavern, the retro thrusters had barely been able to arrest his descent. Shaken but not dead, the boarding team had debarked into the cavern system that riddled the moon. They had expected a zero-gee operation, but their footsteps had settled on a firm bedrock of stone untroubled.

Sola, in her Mechanicus pattern exploration suit, quickly calibrated her advanced augury equipment. Sigismund could feel the powerful radiation flooding the tunnels on his skin. Although his power armor was capable of handling void born radiation, the amount that bounced around the tunnels was entirely more potent.

"You never bring me anywhere nice, Sigs." Remi Nostromo stepped up to the captain as the boarding team established a perimeter, armed with specialized shotgun shells capable of firing in a vacuum.

"You never deserve it, Remi. Now if we could please keep the banter to a minimum, I promised Sola I'd behave." The sensorium suit within his power armor was usually quite efficient, but its returns were hashed with static and ghost returns. Even his autosenses projected a filmy grit onto his vision.

"That was your mistake, not mine." Remi took his surroundings in, the raw stone tunnels becoming smooth shafts further in. The orks had made a mess of things. "I can usually sense the currents of the warp easily enough. They were little more than lethargic eddies back on the ship. But here, they are nonexistent. We are definitely on the right track."

Yards away, Knuckles took long ponderous strides reminiscent of low-gee environments. No one seemed keen to remind him that the gravity was relatively normal. A criticism that would end badly for anyone who dared, bar perhaps the captain himself.

"Sending party auspex uploads. The data communion is achieved but the machine-spirits are disturbed by the ambient interference," announced Sola.

Slowly, icons appeared in Sigismund's helm display. Party vitals and augmented sensor range being fed to his armor's war spirit. "Confirmed, Sola." The captain waved over his team leaders. "Sergeants-at-arms take your units along these tunnels, stay within vox range if possible and report any findings. We will take the central shaft."

A chorus of affirmatives echoed along the vox network, hand torches were lit and the armsmen spread out along their designated tunnels. Sigismund, Remi, Sola, and an impatient Knuckles heading towards their own. Sola's auguries were mapping out the tunnels ahead of them. The normal range of such a powerful set would normally reach much farther, but despite their present shortcomings, they produces a wealth of data for Sola to explore.

"These readings are highly anomalous. Excluding the crystal matrix shell, the outer layers of the moon is accumulated void particulates but the further we move in the higher the ferro carbon particle count." The vice factotum panned the hand held auspex along the smooth tunnel walls. "This is impossible. The surfaces are bored smooth to the micrometer. There are patterns laced with substances of highly conductive material within these walls. Origin unknown, not to the Imperium anyway. Omnissiah preserve me!" Sola stopped in her steps, Remi and Sigismund slowing down while Knuckles plodded onwards. "Whatever this moon is made of, however the xeno built it, I know what it's for." Her companions waited as Sola's mind raced. The logic engine in her head computed thousands of possible scenario's and compared them to the wealth of knowledge the rogue trader dynasty held. She calculated the sheer mass of the moon and its structural material. "It's an amplifier, but on a massive scale."

"Doez dis thing killz stuff?" asked Knuckles absently from further in the tunnel.

"No" answered Sola, still wrestling with the data inloading her systems. "But there are eight of these satellites and they are all amplifying the harmonics emitted by the Beholder planetoid. That's what is interfering with the ship, and the warp itself. But It would just be a side effect." gasped the overwhelmed factotum.

"If youz says so," Knuckles mumbled into his vox as he reached down to grab something at his feet. "But this 'ere gits dead, so what killz him?" The ork lifted the shredded half remains of one of his kind, its meat flayed from its bones. It had been torn apart without any sign of a struggle. Whatever had killed the ork was still out there, and chances were it would find Sigismund and his crew much easier prey.

"You never bring me anywhere nice," Remi mocked again, shaking his head. Even hidden behind a darkened visor, the navigator could feel the captain's glare burrowing into him. A smile crept along his features.

Trevin's team travelled within target Beta guided by their stab lights. Kursk's survivors were unaccustomed to the gear they were carrying. Thankfully, they had not needed to use any of the overly complicated anchor lines given them. The gravity felt a little off compared to Kursk, or the ship, but it was manageable. Trooper Derrick was taking point with his borrowed shot cannon. He had volunteered to take the most dangerous position, like always. The units loader, trooper Reiner, had died on Kursk barely a week before their rescue. His withered frame succumbing to illness. Trevin had left Derrick at the camp the day they set out to vox for help, his spirit had been crushed. There was a special bond between heavy weapon crewmen and Derrick had taken Reiner's death harder than most. After being rescued, he had recovered his wits but there was now a rancor hiding in his heart. Survivor's guilt, they all carried their share.

He was followed by trooper Lancer, covering his comrade's back with a combat shotgun too clean to ever have been used. Derrick cursed and turned on the scrawny trooper behind him after having his heels stepped on for the sixth time since deployment. Trevin sighed and waved over sergeant Melot to take Lancer's place. A brief stare down between the large heavy gunner and the athletic squad leader set things straight.

Lancer settled beside Trevin apologetically, his wandering eye acting up under the stress. Gus signaled for them to take a private channel, "It's alright Freddy, you know how he's been since Reiner died." Lancer nodded sadly.

"Yeah, I know. He's about to beat Corvin's mean streak." The fidgety trooper looked at the man bringing up their rear. The wiry one eyed man had once been an excitable and violent youth. The years since then had distilled his personality to simply psychotic. Still, he was dependable enough if you knew how to handle him. Even in the dark, trooper Corvin's one good eye shinned back wolfishly at Lancer over the shoulders of the last two members to have been inducted to Misfit squad. Grenadier Dorskovy, a characteristically wide shouldered Ranok, and scout Pius, a stringy Galvan. Those two had been shuffled into the unit before Colonel Maddox had passed from the dust lung. After that, no one had successfully integrated within the cliquish brotherhood that was Misfit.

Other survivors had volunteered to help the captain of the _Semper Fidelis_ get his ship back into order. They were spread along the other two units walking parallel along the tunnels. Good men and women, though Trevin. But Misfit didn't play nice, and so the relatively small unit was on its own. The veteran sergeant led his team deeper into what his mind insisted he think of as a warren. It smacked of filthy creatures and diseased swarm, but he could shake it. The vox were pitifully ineffective and Trevin often went long minutes before getting some scrambled chatter from his other units. It could be worst, he muttered to himself. He was shaved and clean for the first time in years, not to mention well fed. Memories of the meals he had eaten on Kursk wandered into his mind unbidden. Slugs, insects, salt encrusted fishes, the blood of countless rodents, he had even been starved enough to entertained the thought of taking a bite out of an ork once.

"Gus!" waved Jensen Melot. Beckoning him closer on the squad vox channel.

Trevin patted Lancer's shoulder and moved up. Trooper Derrick and sergeant Melot had found a chamber, as unnaturally smooth and featureless as the rest of the tunnels, but far larger. A large pillar stood in the tiered room, its sections filled with large quartz like crystal outcroppings. He signaled the unit to fan out and search, a tedious task for men equipped with little more than handheld electro-torches. Before long the room began to take shape. Lancer had stumbled over some sort of large conduit, Melot had found some kind of machine altar embedded in the pillar, and Corvin had doggedly examined every crystal in the chamber, noting the blurred outlines within by the light his torch. Whatever the room was, it certainly was not their objective. It was far too small and simple to house anything capable of harming a void ship. But it was a start.

"Misfit to squads, do you read?" Trevin let a few seconds pass before repeating his query. Finally, after moving along the room towards its entrance, Trevin got a response.

"Kilo to misfit, I have you, everything alright?" The vox was filled with scratchy echoes, but it would do.

"Good to hear Junger, Misfit has located a possible secondary objective. We will secure the chamber. Get a runner to the shuttle and vox a report. We will hold until we get instructions."

A confirmation echoed through the distortion. Trevin posted his men around the tiered chamber with a good field of fire over the entrance and each other's flanks. He didn't like waiting, it always felt like giving away the initiative, but if this chamber held some kind of importance, he'd have to do just that.

Corvin was still obsessing over the crystals. He smacked his hand torch against the pristine surface a few times.

"Stop that," ordered Trevin. There was no telling what those things were but hitting them probably wouldn't help. Corvin grumbled through the vox and braced his shotgun against the crystal shard, aiming at the entrance. Every few seconds, Trevin could see him glaring suspiciously at the murky crystals.

Ivana Kloda ran through the pitch black tunnels towards the shuttle. She had once been a logistic and communication specialist in Lt. Vassimof's platoon, stationed at the curtain wall. The lack of resources and functional vox sets had long rendered her military occupation specialty defunct. Still, she had survived the fall of the wall thanks to her lover, Sergei. When the block house she and Vassimof's command squad occupied had been beset by ork, Sergei had shielded her with his body. She could still feel the shockwave of the dozens of stikk bombs which had flown through the firing slits of the rockrete bunker. Sergei's dead eyes still stared at her when she pried his corpse from on top of her. Only the timely arrival of colonel Petra, the leader of the Ranok 568th, and his counter charge had made Sergei's sacrifice anything more than a brief respite. Kloda still wondered how she had managed to survive all those long years on Kursk.

Her vox screeched into life, filling her suit with painful feedback. Kloda tried shut it off, stopping in her tracks to fiddle with the shoulder mounted receiver. She tried change channels but they were all filled with screeching interference. Giving up, she pulled out the wire feeding the vox into her suit. The dysfunctional vox had given her a splitting headache and forced her to let her shotgun rest on its carrying strap.

She cursed as the vox somehow hissed back into life, a long sibilant sound that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on its end. The hissing stopped and started periodically, each time seemingly closer than the last.

Her eyes widened when she realized the vox was well and truly disconnected. Instinct kicking in, she slung the shotgun back into her hand and braced it against her shoulder, her eyes panning the flickering beam of her stab light as she slowly circled herself. She couldn't find the source. Back and forth she scanned the perfectly circular tunnel, the hissing filled with an atavistic craving.

Her heart pounded into her chest, salty sweat falling from her brow into her eyes, stinging. The stab light flickered one last time before dying. Panicked welled inside her as the impossible hissing traveled the dark, airless void. She dashed madly down the tunnel berating her stab light, hitting it in her palm in the vain hope of reawakening its simple machine-spirit.

Her steps suddenly faltered as she was hurled backwards, her feet kicking in the air. Something pulled her with such force that her head smashed against the transparent faceplate of her helm. Then, like a puppet on a string, she was lifted and smashed against the tunnel's surfaces again and again. Her body bent from the impacts, shattering bones and making her spit bloody phlegm and broken teeth. She screamed in terror within the confines of her void suit, unable to see her attacker. She twisted and crawled, clawing at the tunnel's smooth floor, grasping desperately for the weapon she had lost, as her ears were filled with the hissing of escaping gases.

Unseen clawed appendages gripped her fractured helm, lifting her to grasp her arms and legs. They were guided by the same malicious intelligence that now watched as her oxygen vented from broken seals. In her final moments, Kloda was painfully aware of the radiation seeping into her void suit, of her flesh cooking, of the unbearable pain that wracked her in helpless agony. It took only short moments before her broken body violently exploded into the vacuum. The long years of her unlikely survival finally coming at an end.

Sigismund's inner circle traveled the unnatural tunnels. Sola had suggested using her equipment to track the radiation trails to their epicenter, surely the source of the amplifier would lie somewhere in its vicinity. Her trick had worked like a charm, finding the largest chamber in their travel yet.

The core of the moon was a vast hollow, its walls bristling with the xeno crystals that made up its outer shell. The room hummed with strange harmonics, low and high frequency waves bouncing along its walls and back towards the unsettling apparatus that sat at its center. An eerie luminescence shining periodically from the crystals in unsettling unison. Sigismund's sensorium suit was filling his autosense visor with overwhelming data, he shut it off with a sequence of rapid blinks. Beside him, Sola stared intently at her handheld auspex readings, seemingly able to make sense of it all. "Knuckles, guard the entrance will ya?"

"Aye boss," the hulking nob positioned himself at the mouth of the perfectly cylindrical entrance and activated his shoulder mounted search light with a twist of a dial, its blinding light easily reaching dozens of meters into the darkness. Like a child discovering a new wonder, the vice factotum hurriedly moved about the room, fascinated by the entirely impossible precision of the crystal pattern and their chiming resonance. All of which purposefully fed the xeno-tech apparatus with the crystal's symphony. Whatever was target Alpha's role as an amplifier, it would be discovered in this chamber.

Sigismund was about to order Remi to make himself useful when he noticed the navigator mouth agape, a pained expression in his eyes. "Nostromo, what is it?" he voxed privately.

"This thing is an abomination," he replied. "A thousand screams hurling pain at the void, brutalizing the warp tides into submission. What could possibly the point?" The navigator pressed his hand against his helm, wishing he could massage the throbbing ache of his furrowed brow. He stepped back and walked further away from the offending apparatus. It eased his pain only by fractions, until he stood at Knuckles' side, ignoring the ork's quizzical glances.

The mutation enabling navigators to guide ships in the empyrean depended, on some fundamental level, on the ability to feel its currents. If his description was accurate, then he no doubt suffered from the same excruciating pain that kept the warp at bay, a sort of psychic counter resonance that artificially repulsed its tides. But why was he feeling the absence now, or more precisely the negation, when moments before he had commented on the utter stillness the sea of souls. Was the construct so efficient in containing, and then project the psychic counter harmonic, without waste or spillage of any kind? What terrible xeno specie could master the laws of both materium and immaterium to this extent, was this truly the work of the mythical Yu'vath? And if so, where were they now?

Sola was still intently scrutinizing the disturbingly shaped apparatus, its twisting curves suspending orbs of glistening liquid like substances, which spiked and quivered endlessly to the unheard, yet unmistakably present harmonics. Partially inorganic machinery ticked with clockwork precision and melded with the suspiciously organic protrusions of the living crystals, unknown fluids coursing between them and the chitinous shells that covered some of its parts.

"Capt'n, you hearing dis?" the nob was tapping his bulbous domed helmet with a thick gloved finger. Sigismund cocked his head, hearing nothing on his vox. Because they were in a vacuum, Knuckles couldn't have actually heard anything other than what noise he made himself. Remi's furrowed brow convinced the captain otherwise. He walked back to the entrance of the chamber while Sola continued to take readings and samples from the xeno machine. Slowly, with every step, he could hear the faint vox signal struggling to reach him. Static and guttural sounds filtered through haphazardly. He recognized the intermittent voice of one of his sergeant-at-arms and frowned. Panicked shots could be heard over the screams, but not the message itself.

"Remi, stay with Sola and keep an eye out, you know which one." The Nostromo sneered at the casual mention of his gift. "Knuckles, come with me. We need to find out what's going on." The heavily armed duo ran off into the tunnel.

Remi sighed, trying to banish the throbbing in his head. His visor was capable of gradual depolarization. With a simple twist of a nob, he would be able to unleash his third eye's power. In his state however, he wondered if he would be able to control it.

The strange containment crystal pillars started to crack. The guardsmen looked around the chamber they had been holding, they were all cracking.

"What did you do?" cursed Trevin as he looked at sergeant Melot. The man was standing by the control pillar with a frown.

"Nothing! I swear by the throne, the runes just starting glowing by themselves, I didn't touch anything." Melot answered defensively.

"I knew it!" Corvin swore, stepping back to fire a few shots into the crystal he had been suspiciously eyeing.

"Cease fire, cease fire!" ordered Trevin. Corvin's shots had flattened against the crystal, to little effect. Whatever was happening here would probably not respond well to gratuitous fire. The veteran sergeant waves his men away, and tried to reach the other survivors, but the vox was scrambled. "Fall back, head to the shuttle, there's no use holding here without orders."

Misfit squad quickly abandoned their position, venturing into the dark tunnels once again. The runner had never returned with instructions from the _Semper Fidelis_. No other squad had voxed any update either. This mission was gakked.

The guardsmen had made it half way to the shuttle's location when the warren tunnels began to merge. With a garbled curse on the vox, Trevin saw Derrick and Pius on point knocked from their feet. The pair struggled in a tangle with jerking shapes on the ground, instinctively drawing knifes and dominating their attackers.

"Friendlies, friendlies!" voxed corporal Junger as he came running from a converging tunnel. The fool's squad mates had run into Trevin's vanguard, resulting in the tussle on the ground. The guardsmen parted slowly, knives and side arms pointed at each other until the truth sunk in.

"Junger? What's going on, why isn't anyone answering their vox?" Trevin stepped up between the two squads to make sure tempers wouldn't flare. He noticed that Junger's squad was more concerned with the direction they had come from than the guardsmen who had nearly killed them.

"Something is out there Trevin. It killed the rest of our squad. Picked them up in the dark and threw their bloodied corpses at us. We can't see it or even see what it's hitting us with. It messes with the vox, Trevin, we need to exfiltrate right gakking now!"

"Calm down corporal! Mistfit, take firing positions." Trevin pointed at the tunnel the frantic guardsmen had come from, his squad spreading out to lay down as much fire as they could if something came their way. "What happened to the runner, any orders?"

Junger shook his head. "We send Kloda but she didn't make it, we got lost in the tunnels and backtracked, that's when we found her body."

"Understood, what about Hollis' squad?" asked the veteran sergeant. Junger shrugged nervously, shock muddling his ability to think. Trevin patted his shoulder and looked him in the eye, as close as their void suits would allow. "You did good Junger, now breathe, again, breathe. It wasn't your fault. But we need to move, something might have been following Misfit too and our only chance is to make it to the extraction point." Junger nodded, understanding slowly creeping into his terrified eyes.

The corporal was beginning to calm down when he folded onto himself, as if hit by a charging grox, and ripped from Trevin's grasp. Junger's visor shattered and blew out pieces of his pulverized skull. Trevin immediately dropped low as the tunnel Misfit watched over exploded in strobing light, every weapon they had firing into the darkness. Flash after flash illuminated the empty tunnel, the guardsmen saturating the area in an attempt to suppress whatever had attacked them. Crouching beside Lancer, one of Junger's boys was thrown back as if he had been hit with a sledge hammer, his entire body jerking as he dropped from the tunnel's wall, spine broken.

"Fall back!" ordered Trevin, they were shooting at ghosts, the tunnel seemingly empty. Whatever was killing them was picking them off effortlessly, far out of reach. With practiced ease, Misfit peeled back, Lancer and Pius first, followed by Dorskovy and Melot. Corvin patted Derricks' back to let him know he was free to fall back. The heavy gunner still blazed away with the heavy shot cannon, peppering the large cylindrical tunnels. He refused to move, the entire unit leaving him behind unknowingly. Trevin stopped and pulled his squad mates past him as he saw what the gunner was shooting at. Derrick had spotted their killer, a four meter long reptilian creature clinging to the ceiling, white as snow and covered in armor plates bolted to its stone like flesh. Strange contraptions were fused to its featureless oval head, the crystals found on the moon fanning out of them. The techno-horror sinuously dodged the shot cannon's bursts, warp light coruscating from its implants, then shot cannon blew apart, throwing Derrick back.

"It's on the ceiling!" Trevin voxed as he crouched low and darted back to get his fallen weapon specialist. Shells barked over his head and slammed into the ceiling where the xeno had hidden, out of sight in the cyclopean tunnels. It hesitated, dropping down from the ceiling to put Trevin between it and the fire. It was smart, Trevin hated smart xenos.

The veteran sergeant grabbed the harness of his fallen comrade and pulled hard, turning on himself and dragging the unconscious gunner behind him. Having fought long and hard at each other's side, Misfit were well trained in the retrieval of their numbers. The squad fanned out along the curving sides of the tunnel and laid down a punishing barrage. Now back in the field of fire of the guardsmen, the many limbed reptile curled onto itself, presenting the heavy plates of its armor to the shotgun blasts. Misfit wasn't scoring a kill, but they had suppressed their enemy until Trevin had rejoined their rank.

"We got you now you ugly gakking xeno!" Corvin could be heard filling the squad vox with curses. Righteous hatred coursed in the veins of any good imperial citizen, but Corvin's was raw and malicious. He did not hate the xeno for what it stood for, he hated it for hates own sake.

Warp lightening danced across the xeno's implants and without warning, all the squads electro-torches flickered and failed.

"Flare!" bellowed Melot, red sparks igniting as they arched towards the xeno. The red light was poor substitute for the brilliance of a lumen source, but it would keep them fighting. A baleful hiss traveled into the squad's suits, the xeno psyker's tricks filling their helms with a sibilant horror that no ork had matched during the long desperate decade Misfit had fought them.

Junger's last surviving squad mate howled in unhinged fear, falling to his knees and clawing at his vox relay. As the xeno uncoiled and stretched its limbs threateningly, Misfit ran pass the shell-shocked soldier. They were all brother, forged and blooded in battle, but Misfit knew very well the signs of combat madness. Junger's boy was lost, if the man survived the day than he would doubtlessly take his own life, given the opportunity. Too many had done just that.

The squad ran down the tunnels as the techno-shaman reared in front of the sobering soldier. Slowly the beast gripped his limbs and splayed him out, its stinging spite a murderous pulse driven into the abandoned survivor's mind. With methodical cruelty the xeno twisted its prey's limbs until they popped, leaving the broken soul unable to move. Pain, fear, and madness were cut blessedly short as the xeno dropped the man on the ground and stamped on his vision shield, shattering the only protection the dying man had against the void and the all-consuming radiation. The creature watched, its alien mind relishing the futility of the man as he struggled vainly against his end.

The indulgence had given Trevin's squad an all too brief respite. Again, the hateful hissing filled their vox as they burst out of the tunnels and ran for the shuttle, Derrick slung over Dorskovy's burly shoulders. Trooper Hollis and his squad waited by one of its unopened side hatch. The Persephonian born chimera driver swept his arms above his head to signal Trevin's mob. He only stopped once the pallid reptilian hunter vaulted from the tunnel's lip behind them. Hollis and his boys shouldered their weapons and began covering Misfit's desperate escape.

The xeno reared from its six limbed sprint and angrily flailed as shells that found their mark. Its cranial implants flared anew, crystals throbbing with warp light as invisible blasts of telekinetic energy smashed into Hollis and his unit. One poor sod was flung so far he slipped from the moons strange gravity, floating away into the void.

The xeno spun angrily over itself, too many prey for it to kill alone, and disappeared into the darkened tunnels before the guardsmen could mass enough fire to kill it.

"What in saint Equestria's name was that thing?" Hollis asked as Trevin's unit reached the shuttle.

"I have no idea but I don't plan on find out. We are all that's left." Huffed Trevin, the suit's oxygen incapable of feeding his ravaged lungs. Again, the soldier was reminded of his hell on Kursk as he taste the blood that sputtered from his lungs onto his lips.

"Get that hatch open and let's bang out of this miserable rock" Trevin forcibly suggested. Hollis shook his head.

"We tried, but the frakking pilot isn't responding to the vox and the shuttles locked tight."

Trevin cursed, watching the tunnel's entrance fearfully. "Just another day in the guard, heh Hollis."

Despite himself, the squad leader chuckled. "Tell that to Ygna, he's screaming bloody murder on our vox channel. Hollis looked into the star lit darkness beyond the moon's surface, a small shape still tumbling head over heels.

"Remi," Sola beckoned from the xeno apparatus, "Come take a closer look." The navigator twisted at the waist, observing the vice factotum's proximity to the hated machine.

"If it is all the same to you Sola dear, I would rather not." The captain and Knuckles had been gone only a few minutes when Sola had finally broken from her curiosity induced trance and made her way back to the entrance, bioluminescence throbbing behind her with the rhythm of living breath. It painted a rather surreal picture, her thin frame burdened by the weight of her instruments, silhouetted by an unholy creation whose only purpose seemed to harvest and redirect the living symphony of the sentient crystals. All of which was lit by those very same colonies, Remi wondered if the psychic things could understand him and Sola. Hubert certainly had painted them as possessing a sort of willful intelligence.

"This amalgamation is amazing. The xeno and bio tech are blending together in a symbiotic bond so subtle I can hardly tell them apart." Sola excitedly explored her readings, hoping to inspire some interest in Remi. "The harmonics singing from the crystals combined with the engineering of such a massive amplifier, it fuses materium and imaterium science into a perfect mix. If I'm right and this entire warp anomaly is a latent effect of its purpose, I wonder what it was meant to do."

"Kill, undoubtedly," Remi answered matter-of-factly. "Its description matches sixteen other known artifacts discovered at this date by the Disciplines of Thule, all found in dead systems along the Koronus expanse. All of which, I hate to admit, displayed evidence of some kind of connection with Yu'vath technologies. But don't tell Hubert I said that."

"Xeno-archeology Remi? I never knew!" Sola purred, excited at the prospect of having found a person to finally discuss some of her observations. She walked over to Remi who was standing stiffly at the chamber's entrance, eyes trying to pierce the darkness ahead of him. She leaned against the curvature of the tunnel and crossed her legs, resting against it. Her fingers still danced across her instruments, switching from one to the other along her harness.

"Xeno-archeology is forbidden lore my dear. I don't share my many scholarly pursuits with the uninitiated. The Emperor's Inquisition already have too much of an interest in me and my House."

"You don't trust me then?" Sola pouted jokingly, she knew better than to imagine people would instantly find her trustworthy. She was not Sigs after all, whose unexplainable knack for fostering loyalty was as evident as his foolish antics.

"The last time I trusted someone I was left to rot on a penal world for over six months." Remi admitted sourly.

Sola perked up, looking up from her augury tools. "I thought navigators were exempt from imperial law?"

"We are," Remi said, remembering the unpleasant business. "But the captain of the ship I was bound to had some seriously bad habits. One of which was cold trading. Xeno artifacts sold to the highest bidder left my lord dying on an inquisitorial excrutiator rack. Due to my limited part in the crime, and my navis nobilite status, I was abandoned on a prison world without trial or representation. No doubt the inquisition wanted to force my House into a precarious situation, after all my treatment at their hands was highly unorthodox. Inquisitors often play by entirely different rules, you see. If the Nostromo came to my rescue they would have proven that they knew of my activities. More damning still, that they had agents spying on inquisitorial affairs, so they left me to my fate."

"That's horrible Remi," gasped the vice factotum, genuine sympathy in her voice. It perturbed and comforted the navigator to hear someone take interest in his life. Not that he ever allowed others close. Perhaps this damnable endeavor was making him weak in the knees. The claustrophobic darkness didn't help one bit.

"It was. I was surrounded by filthy peasants who thought to take their woes out on the only mutant on the premises. After the first few demonstration of my powers, the clever ones tried their luck. At night, at meals, at the lavatory, it never ended. I had to hide, cheat, lie, and betray just to stay one step ahead. Not to mention hide the obvious third eye glowering out of my skull. Not that it helped, a cursory inspections could reveal me at any time, and did, more times than I care to remember. I was made into a freak, surrounded by savages. Scummy filthy apes, every single one of them." The hate was still powerful he realized, every memory breathing fresh life to dull scars.

Sola uncomfortably returned to her instruments. It hadn't occurred to him that she might consider herself, by his definition, a filthy peasant ape. "My apologies Sola, I get carried away. You know I don't consider you kin to those blatantly inferior mongrels of moronic stock."

Sola nodded, meeting his eyes. Few dared meet the gaze of a navigator but the _Semper Fidelis_ seemed full of them. "I know, but you sure give Sigs a hard time."

"Reasonably so. He possesses a brash and limited intellect that enjoys the company of orks. As if that was not damming enough, he constantly puts us and the crew in jeopardy. It's only a matter of time before he fails us."

Sola seemed to agree with Remi, but her conclusion differed. She hadn't chosen this life because it was safe, or easy. It was challenging and fast pace. It required wit and skill and daring. More importantly, for those who did not fit the mold that the Imperium imposed on them, this life was the only shot at freedom and acceptance they could ever hope for. It tended to attract rather eccentric forward thinking individuals, and Sigs was nothing if not that. He was free, Sola realized, smiling despite herself.

"Have you discovered something, Sola?" Remi asked as her face softly lit with the smile.

"Yes… well no, I have an idea of how to get the ship free." Sola communed with the machine spirits of her sensorium suit and synthesized its conclusions in her mind's logic engine. "But it will require some brash meddling and possibly a great deal of jeopardy."

"Great, here we go again," grumbled the navigator.

Sigismund had found a trail of rapidly crystalizing blood. The void was lethally cold but the lack of air also limited thermal exchange. There was just enough residual heat for his armor's senses to pick up. They had followed the winding tunnels to a dead end and found what they were looking for. A heap of mutilated bodies was piled meters high, ork and men alike thrown in an uncaring mound.

"Oie! Sumptin'killz em boss." Knuckles stated dumbly. Sigismund slid his powered blade out slowly, his auspex picking up movement a dozen meters behind them. They had been herded into an ambush.

"Turn about Knuckles, we are about to meet what did this." Raising his refractor shield, Sigismund adopted a traditional defensive stance while Knuckles limbered his muscular limbs and took his heavy axe in hand. Their ambushers slowly inched their way towards them, the ork's mighty search light illuminating their shapes.

A trio of large reptilian xenos slinked to the fore, their stony flesh pale from a life within the warrens. They reared on four powerful limbs, two more grasping strange guns to their chest and wickedly barbed hand-to-hand weapons. Their bodies were augmented with plates of armor stitched over the flesh of their vitals, featureless ovoid skulls splitting in wide jagged maws filled with sharp teeth. Their leader was a meter taller than its brood kin, rippling muscular mass augmenting its killing ability. One of its forelimbs was amputated and a long chain blade replaced it, slowly idling in the airless vacuum. The smallest of them was easily the height of Knuckles and Sigismund was willing to wager just as heavy, if not more. They would easily overpower him if he gave them the opportunity.

Before Sigismund could muster a strategy, Knuckles exploded into violence. The massive ork swung his hefty axe at the lead xeno, smashing into its parrying chainsword limb. Sparks flew as they both struggled to overbear each other. As quickly as it had begun, the ork was beaten back a few steps and the relatively smaller xeno scrambled up the cylindrical walls. They paid knuckles little attention as they hung at impossible angles from the tunnel surface, their weapons barking heavy barbed slugs at Sigismund.

The captain quickly knelt, sheltering behind the wide cover of his shield, its power field sparking madly. Sigismund aimed over his cover, firing bursts of mass reacting bolt shells at the reptilian xenos in the hopes of deterring them. They simply scurried away from the barrage of shells, working together to keep him pinned as they maneuvered for a better vantage point.

Knuckled roared as he charged again, he lifted his axe to swat away the abomination's chain blade and penetrated its guard. He was chest to chest with the cyber augmented nightmare, slamming his meaty fist into the creatures face. It screeched silently at the insolence of the greenskin but rather than fall back, it wrapped its taloned limbs around Knuckles in a crushing embrace, the chain blade spitting sparks against his suit's armored back plates. Its other limbs found purchase on the jagged suit and clawed at its soft material, using a barbed spike cruelly welded to its arm to pierced the suit and bury itself deep into Knuckles' sides.

The ork bellowed in pain, the warmth of his body draining into the void. Thankfully, his alien constitution would keep him alive and fighting long enough to obliterate his enemy. With the chain blade seeking to rend him in half, the ork lifted his axe high above his head and brought the spiked end down onto the snarling abomination. The creature took bludgeoning blows to the head and shoulder before snarling atavistically at the greenskin. It proved to be an ill choice as Knuckles' spiked haft shattered its sharp fangs and buried itself in the back of its throat. The xeno immediately released its grasp on the ork, his suit venting gases furiously.

By then, the flanking reptiles had found their perch and Sigismund's visor starting blinking with warning runes as the razor slugs ripped into the vulnerable joints of his power armor. The systems auto repair functions followed the war spirit's instructions to fill the gaps with sealing gel. Trusting his fate to the Emperor, the warrior rotated his stance to protect him from one of his assailants while opening himself up to the other. Razor hail ricocheting against his ceramite battle plate but penetrated into his neck and hips. It was time to see if his gamble had paid off. The xeno reptile that showered him with lethal fire had committed to its barrage. Sigismund lifted his storm bolter and pulled the trigger, explosive shells showering the stationary target. In seconds, the remaining fifty rounds of his magazine were emptied in a flurry. The xeno shuddered as the bolts penetrated its unarmored flesh and pummeled the rest, plates buckling under the punishing bursts. The creature slipped from its perch, sliding down along the curvature of the tunnel in a bloodied mess. Limbs had been sheared from its body, and what remained of the xeno poured its pulverized innards onto the stone surface of the tunnel. With a silent screech of baleful hate, the remaining xeno scampered down the wall in a six legged charge, only to be battered aside by Knuckles' charge moments before reaching Sigismund.

The abandoned abomination was writhing in pain, limbs flailing at the axe whose haft impaled its gullet. Retching in spasm, it pulled the offending obstruction with great difficultly.

Sigismund looked to it and its lesser kin, now desperately fighting off the juggernaut that pounded it with fists and boots. Leaving his shield behind, Sigismund grasped the hilt of his gladius in both hands and charged the abomination. Unable to focus on anything put the steel in its throat, Sigismund smashed into its elongated torso and buried the energized blade in its bowels. The abomination shuddered helplessly as lightning flickered over the powered blade, charring its inside. Pressing his advantage, the warrior bent low and used all the strength of his armor's servos to slice the blade upwards. The creature finally collapsed, its body split open by the energized edge of the short sword.

Knuckles was leering over his prone foe, grubby mits prying open the creature's mouth until it snapped. He wrestled with its flailing body, clawed arms and legs rending at his body, he ignored it as he crushed the life out of the creature. The ork pulled himself off the creature, suit still hissing in half of dozen places, and noticed a lack of things to kill. Disappointed, he rummaged across his suit pockets languidly and produced a long unmarked tube. He spent the next few minutes sealing his suit, and his flesh, with the greyish goo.

Sigismund picked up his shield and looked at the carnage his ambushers, and Knuckles, had wrought. "Glad you came along Knuckles," rasped the captain, recovering from his exertion. He could feel the blood flowing from his wounds within the suit, most of which came from the embedded shard in his neck.

"Yup," agreed the ork, still focused on his repairs. When he was done, he swaggered over to the abomination and ripped his weapon free. Few things made an ork happier than a good fight. These foes had put up a decent one, and for that, Knuckles was thankful.

"We need to get everyone together and finish this. The armsmen won't stand a chance if these things come after them." Sigismund tried his vox, expectedly finding nothing more than damned static. "Ever heard of the Rak'gol, Knuckles?" Sigismund asked his companion as they set out in the tunnels again.

"Nah, is daz what'em gits were?" asked Knuckles, unimpressed. Sigismund nodded gravely, far more concerned.

"Yeah, I think so. Hubert mentioned them once or twice. The thing is, they aren't supposed to be here. They plague the Koronus expanse, in the Alenic Depths. Been carving a swath through the place for centuries now. A bit far from home, are they?"

"If youz say so, boss." Clearly Knuckles' interest in the Rak'gol laid in little more than killing them, his attention had already wavered. He inspected his axe with a critical eye, unhappy with the damage it had sustained.

"Meet up with Sola and Remi would you, keep them safe. I'll go looking for the other teams," Sigismund asked.

"She ain't gonna be happyz," the ork mumbled as he traced a thumb over a particularly deep notch in his axe head.

"I know buddy, I know…" the captain and Knuckles parted ways at the junction that led to the crystal chamber.

Knuckles slung his axe and blinked a few times before setting out. His limbs were stiff, the cold having made them ache, and his boots sloshed with his own spilled blood. He tried to breathe deeply but the remaining air in his suit was thinning rapidly. His wounds itched and burned, his helmet's cracks plugged with his homemade repair pitch, and there was probably more of those things scurrying in the tunnels. Knuckles couldn't help but smile. It was a good day to be an ork.

Sigismund had finally rallied with the last of his armsmen to have survived. The walk back to the central chamber where his inner circle waited was a tense and morose. Over half his men had been taken in the dark, picked off one at a time when they were most vulnerable. He had often heard rumors of Rak'gol swarming and slaughtering their prey. If that was true, than these ones played by different rules. They were defensive, protective even. They were not the marauders that plagued the stars, they were guardians, and that meant there was something precious they were willing to die for.

The armsmen poured into the central chamber and took up defensive positions, the motions devoid of will, their bodies simply doing what it was trained to do. Thankfully, the stab lights had given them away before Remi could scour their souls from their bones, which was the only consolation these men had left. Knuckles hovered protectively around Sola, who looked anything but vulnerable. Her murderous glare followed Sigismund everywhere he went, her arms crossed angrily. She stood as implacable as titan.

"We need to leave this place. The locals aren't friendly," said the captain as his friends surrounded him. No one spoke, Remi was smiling, blatantly enjoying Sigs uncomfortable position, while Knuckles looked half way intimidated by Sola. After a pause, Sigismund sighed.

"I'm sorry," he finally said to Sola. She uncrossed her arms and picked up her data slate, a complex set of calculation and helpful diagrams explaining what she stubbornly refused to.

Remi translated, he doubted Sigismund had any clue of what all this meant. "Our dear Sola rightly calculated the frequency these crystals are oscillating at. A proper counter harmonic will tear this place apart and, hopefully, create a chain reaction that will leave the Beholder incapable of maintaining its anomalous field."

Sigismund leaned in towards the navigator for discretion, a useless gesture considering the situation. They all shared this private channel. "All it takes is for one moon to fail, just one?"

"Yes, Sigs!" Sola spat in her vox, shoulder still turned away from the captain. "Everything the Yu'vath built here is precisely measured, infinitely complex, and under normal circumstances, impossible to disrupt. But the crystal shells were breached and we were lucky enough to get here before they could mend." The trio uncomfortably waited for someone to answer Sola. Both Remi and Knuckles glaring at Sigismund to reap the rewards of his broken promise. No heroic, that was all she had asked. Instead, Sigismund had ventured into the Rak'gol infested tunnels alone, in a Yu'vath construct of immeasurable power, and after being ambushed and subsequently wounded.

"And how do we do that, Sola?" The vice factotum looked around the chamber, still fuming.

"Knuckles!" she called, the ork startled at the imperious tone. "Smash!" she ordered angrily.

It took a few seconds for Knuckles to get the gist of it, then he unlimbered his massive axe and leapt at the crystals she had designated. With relish, the brute smashed his weapon into the crystal, their hue changing and becoming ragged. He cleaved the pillars with wanton aggression and unfettered strength. It never grossed Knuckle's mind that his actions were tantamount with genocide, the billions of crystalline shards each a microscopic entity. It would not have phased him even if he did, ork instincts driving him mindlessly. Quickly, the hum of the chamber changed, the bioluminescence flickering angrily.

"I suggest we leave," Remi said, already on his way out. Sola grinned smugly as Knuckles became the instrument of her destructive impulse. Soon, the entirety of Sig's boarding team took to the tunnels amidst the hooting laughter of the excited Ork.

Refusing to let enemy retain the iniative, Trevin had sent Lancer to scale the shuttle. Dorskovy had hauled the slim Corvin on his shoulder, and much to their complaints, Lancer had climbed both of them up to the lighter's wing. From there, the skittish guardsmen had made his way to the cockpit viewing port, only to pale at the sight. Lancer had then mimicked a gun to his head and "pulled" the trigger. It seemed that the creature had tortured the pilot with its psyker tricks, far before it began hunting his men. Again, Trevin grumbled, he hated smart xenos.

"What's the plan veteran sergeant?" Hollis asked.

Trevin looked around their perimeter, guardsmen were in cover behind rocks, nervously watching the tunnel entrance, weapons in hand. Any moment, the xeno would return, no doubt with reinforcement. The crystal chamber Misfit had been occupying was filled with strange crystals, each and every one of them looking like one of those things. Hindsight a terribly useless thing to a soldier. It was obvious now that they had seen one of its kind in action. To make matters worse, small tremors were growing in frequency and size. They had started a few minutes ago, it felt like the damn rock was starting to pull itself apart.

"What are the odds of us blowing a hatch and not trashing the shuttle?" mused Trevin.

Dorskovy, the demolition expert, was called over and asked again. "About as likely as surviving a quake in hive Queberus," the trooper answered. Back on their home world, Ranok was plagued by frequent earthquakes. They often leveled entire sections of hives. It made pragmatists of its people and any Ranok worth his salt was a master of excavation. Trevin didn't understand the specifics of the expression Dorskovy had used, but he got the message.

"That's a no then. We are properly gakked, aren't we Hollis?" Trevin complained.

"Like a broodmare in a stable full of studs." Agreed Hollis.

Another tremor shook the moon, this time strong enough to split the surface the troopers were standing on. If the xenos would not kill them to a man first, then this rock would break apart, and Trevin guessed that the cavern the orks had blown out on the moon, the one they stood in, would be the first to go. Trevin cursed at the thought.

"Well, if we can't ride in it, we will ride on it."

"It's not a horse, Gus," stated Hollis.

"I know that, but if we have any shot of making it out of here in one piece, the shuttle is it. I guarantee you the rogue trader won't abandon his assets. It probably has a homing beacon on it, or maybe it's big enough for their ship to find. Either way, we don't have a choice."

"Alright Trevin, but make it quick, we have visitors." Hollis warned as he shouldered his shotgun.

Shadowy forms massed at the tunnel entrance. Dozens of sinuous reptiles were readying to charge. Unlike the techno-shaman, these ones had large barreled guns. Another tremor coursed through the moon as the firing began. Guardsmen were hugging their cover tightly as the fast moving xenos darted from cover to cover, their razored slugs threatening explosive decompression to anyone hit. When they slammed into armored carapace, men were thrown to the ground from the brutal impact. When they sliced through void suits, the results were all too quick and gruesome.

Trevin stood his ground in the relative safety of the lighter's shadow. He ordered his fire teams to peel back in waves, and coordinated support fire for the men closest to the rapidly advancing xenos. The fire fight was savage, more Kursk survivors dying by the minute. The most powerful tremor yet knocked Trevin on his back as a barbed slug passed where his head had been. Large furrows were carved into the inch thick visor but otherwise left it intact. It seems the lucky star he had been born under still watched over him. He kicked himself back up and added his shotgun's fire to the defense. A dozen men had already made it behind the cover of the lighter and used grappling lines and zero-gee harnesses to secure themselves to the shuttle's fuselage. Those lucky enough to be atop the shuttle crawled to its edge and rainne down support fire for their retreating comrades.

Corvin, Derrick, and Lancer had already climbed the fuselage by the time Melot ran by Trevin. He gripped at his friend's suit and yanked him away from the fight.

"You're spoiling my aim Jensen!" Barked Trevin as he was desperately trying to cover his men, stopping only to reload thick shells into the breach of his shotgun. Barely ten yards away, the xenos were pouncing onto men Trevin had known for the better part a decade, good men.

Sergeant Melot yanked again, slamming his friend besides the grappled line, ready for ascension. "No more heroic horse shit Gus, I'm making sure you're anchored to this useless piece of junk before everything falls apart."

The tremors were practically continuous now, the entire moon shaking itself apart for no apparent reason. Behind Melot a xeno reptile reared up, a pair of limbs tipped with scything blades ready to decapitate the vulnerable sergeant.

The killing blow was unexpectedly turned aside as a large trooper dived from the shuttles' back onto the fearsome xeno, the bladed limb missing its mark and slicing into Melot's shoulder. Trevin watched impotently as he took out an emergency sealing patch from his harness, unable to help the trooper who was now straddling the xeno and bludgeoning it ceaselessly with his shot cannon. Too late Trevin realized that it was Derrick, concussed and wracked with guilt, refusing to survive while another friend died. He was buying them precious seconds with which to escape at the cost of his life.

The creature twisted onto itself, the way only a lizard could, and stabbed Derrick repeatedly as he smashed its skull in with the twenty kilo cannon. Trevin and Melot scrambled up the line to the top of the shuttle, pained curses beneath their breath. As the wounded sergeant crawled away to secure his anchoring line, Trevin looked down, a hail of razor slugs forcing him to take cover. He had just enough time to see Derrick slump over the creature he had slain, foes entwined together in a morbid embrace.

The guardsmen were firing over the edges of the shuttle as the last tremor hit, the bedrock splitting beneath them. The shuttle fell away from the dying moon, its unnatural gravity failing. The soldiers we thrown off the dying satellite and flung to the extent of their tethers, a shamble of bodies colliding with each other and loose debris. The xenos were thankfully less lucky, falling away into the void, screeching impotently at those who had destroyed the source of their millennia long guardianship.

Again, by the skin of their teeth, the volunteer guards had survived, but not without losing many more of their comrades. People who had kept them sane through their shared misery, who had nurtured hope when it seemed lost, who had fanned the righteous fury needed to preserver. As they tumbled into the darkness, wired mesh lines anchoring them to safety, Trevin thought of Derrick's sacrifice. Had his survival truly robbed his life of its worth? Had the Emperor not given him no greater purpose than to die that others may live? How could Trevin ever repay the debt he owed the soldiers who had fought and died at his side?

Their gambit had paid off. The damaged cause to the harmonics of satellite Alpha had been enough to unbalance the Yu'vath artifice. What purpose it had once fulfilled now laid in waste. They may never truly know what the ancient warp magos of the Yu'vath, or the Rak'gol for that matter, had wanted with it. But as the planetoid and its moon shuddered in their death throes, Sigismund couldn't care less. Slowly but surely, the tides of the empyrean flooded back around the Beholder. More importantly, the reactor core was stable once more. Drive master Scartus performed the rites of re-ignition, and the Mechanicus adept was pleased. The master of etherics had homed in on the survivors of satellite Beta, sending a rescue party for the guardsmen minutes before their oxygen supply had depleted. Of the boarding team sent to satellite Cappa, there was no news, a terrible fate having no doubt befallen them.

The severing of warp space had pained Pater Nostromo greatly, and the senile navigator was being tended to by the specialized medicae of his spire. Remi took over the navigation proper of the ship and promised there would be no further difficulties as they plied the sea of souls to friendly port. Sigismund dearly wanted to believe him. Too much had happened on this adventure for him to wish any more opportunities for glory.

With the true nature of the Beholder at least partly illuminated, and the xeno-tech readings Sola had taken, Sigismund knew they could turn a pretty profit with the Adeptus Mecanicus explorator fleet, especially the sect of Disciples of Thule. If not, he knew of a few rogue trader who would be interested in plundering the planetoid's remains. With luck, they would cut even as Sola predicted. The senatorium of the dynasty would no doubt find that of little comfort. He could ill afford the detour he planned on taking, but Sigismund believed the guardsmen marooned on Kursk had well deserved their return home.

For those born to the stars however, like himself and countless others aboard, the _Semper Fidelis_ was home. They would continue to ply the edges of Imperial space, bringing the Emperor's light to the lost worlds teetering at the boundaries of the Astronomicon's reach.

After all, if not for rogue traders like himself, who would be mad enough to dispute the creatures that falsely claimed dominium over mankind's galaxy?


End file.
